Barcelona terror attack: Lessons we've learned from Las Ramblas

We’ve been here before

With the first reports from Barcelona, at around 3.50pm, came an anguished familiarity. This was another vehicle attack by Islamist terrorists, targeting tourists. The fear, uncertainty and disorientation are amplified as we remember anew the trauma of earlier attacks: it is the psychological warfare that accompanies the physical carnage of terror.

Vehicles are weapons

The incidents in Barcelona and Cambrils are the latest instance of cars and vans being used to kill and maim, with 13 left dead and over 100 injured on Las Ramblas and five suspected terrorists were shot dead by Spanish police in the coastal town of Cambrils after they drove into pedestrians. It comes less than a week after a car drove into anti-racism protesters in Charlottesville, killing protester Heather Heyer. London has faced three vehicle attacks this year: in March, four were killed and 50 injured on Westminster Bridge; in June’s London Bridge attack eight people died and 48 were injured, and local worshipper Makram Ali was killed at a mosque in Finsbury Park in June. These attacks followed similar incidents in Berlin and Nice in 2016, and Stockholm and Paris in 2017.

Tourists are targets

Las Ramblas is the heart of tourism in Barcelona. So far, victims of the attack are confirmed to have come from 24 countries, including France, Greece, Australia and Belgium. Two of the recent attacks on London, on Westminster Bridge and in Borough Market, also targeted tourists, ensuring an international impact. In December last year 12 people died when a truck was driven into Berlin’s popular Breitscheidplatz Christmas market, while in 2015 38 people were killed in a mass shooting at the popular beach resort of Port El Kantaoui in Tunisia, including 30 British holidaymakers. When Brussels was targeted in 2016, three coordinated bombings hit the city’s airport and a metro station, killing 32.

Roads need inbuilt defences

There were no bollards in place to slow down the attack on Las Ramblas, despite warnings. According to Catalan newspaper El Periodico, the CIA had informed regional police that the Barcelona street might be a target for terrorists. Across other European cities, rising bollards are the new normal. In London, council officials had declined to install barriers on the capital’s bridges only a day before the atrocity on London Bridge (fences on the bridge were removed in 2010 for being too “ugly”). 24 hours after the terror attack in June, heavy duty concrete barriers were installed overnight at Waterloo, Lambeth and Westminster bridges. That same week, authorities in Nice completed a £16.5 million project to defend the beach front with reinforced bollards and steel cables. Anti-terror barriers were put in place on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh ahead of this month’s Fringe festival.

The Moroccan connection

The British Foreign Office advises that most visits to Morocco are trouble free for the 600,000 UK nationals who visit annually, and the US State Department recently praised the country’s role in countering terrorism, busting 46 terror cells since 2015. Yet some Moroccan nationals have been connected with attacks on Europe. One of the terrorists involved in the London Bridge attack, 30-year-old Rachid Redouane, was believed to have been born in Morocco but moved to Dublin, while another, Youssef Zaghba, grew up in Morocco. The IS sympathiser who attempted to bomb Brussels Central Station, Oussama Zariouh, was a 36-year-old Moroccan national. A Barcelona terrorism suspect was yesterday named as Morocco-born Driss Oukabir — although his brother Moussa is now believed to have been the driver. The country has been identified as a “natural candidate” for Islamic radicalisation, according to Dr Max Abrahms, an expert on terrorism and counter-terrorism, with a majority Sunni Muslim population and a rising youth unemployment rate.

Armed police everywhere

Across stations and airports in major European cities from Rome to Paris, and on street patrols, armed police are a new constant presence. In London, it took just eight minutes for armed officers to stop June’s terror attack in London Bridge. Earlier this month it was announced that an additional 600 armed officers would be deployed across the capital

Mayors are our moral centre

Barcelona’s bright, firebrand mayor, Ada Colau, cut short her holiday to return to the city immediately after yesterday’s attacks. In a statement last night, she was quietly furious. “Barcelona has always been ...a city open to the world, a city that’s proud of its diversity,” she told assembled press. “To the cowards who tried to spread terror, hatred and fear today: you won’t get it,” she said.

We have seen it in London: the capital looked to Sadiq Khan for guidance in the wake of attacks on our city. Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, was a reassuring and visible figure in the dark days after the Paris atrocities in November 2015, as was Andy Burnham, Greater Manchester’s mayor, in May, and after the attack in Berlin, the city’s mayor Michael Müller argued that the city’s values and spirit would persevere.

Social media connects us

Social media is the first recourse for many after terrorist attacks. We use it to learn about what’s happened, and also to feel connected to, and express, solidarity.

Early witness reports and images give way to shows of unity. After Manchester, people shared images of Ariana Grande’s trademark bunny ears, or pink balloons.

Yesterday Facebook activated its “Safety Check” function — as it did with Westminster, London Bridge, Manchester, Paris and Nice — so that those in the city could reassure family and friends they were safe. Indeed, the authorities advised people to use social networks to avoid flooding the city’s phone network. Police also asked people not to share images of the dead or injured — instead, images of cats (“gatos”, in Spanish) were shared, attached to the #Barcelona hashtag. On Instagram, many shared pictures of the city, overlaid with a black ribbon.

Trump’s inevitable tweets

Last night, Trump tweeted to express US support to the people of Barcelona, but followed this up by inviting followers to “study” a long-discredited fable about brutal methods supposedly used by General John “Black Jack” Pershing to crush a rebellion in a Muslim province of the Philippines following the Spanish-American War in the early 1900s..

In the wake of the London Bridge attack, he used the opportunity to revive an ongoing feud with Mayor Sadiq Khan, tweeting “At least seven dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed’.

In fact the Mayor had said there was “no reason to be alarmed” by an increased and armed police presence in the city that day, and had condemned the attack “in the strongest possible terms.”

We will return to normality

Although a police presence and security tape was still visible in some places on Las Ramblas this morning, the thoroughfare was open to the public. As we have seen before, cities refuse to be cowed by terrorism. Nice’s promenade was reopened within three days; Borough Market reopened 11 days after the London Bridge attack in June; Brussels airport partially reopened 12 days after the terrorist attack last March.

Memorials, flowers, and cards of condolence outlast the physical damage to a landmark, and the emotional impact is harder to measure. Yet, as we have seen time and again, adversity draws us together even as terrorists try to prise us apart.

Phoebe Luckhurst, Ben Travis, Katie Strick, Samuel Fishwick