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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Catalonia is Spain’s fertile ground for terrorists

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Despite its long experience in fighting terrorism, Spain failed this past week to prevent two deadly attacks in Catalonia — a key tourist magnet but also the Spanish region most vulnerable to such assaults, analysts say.


In attacks claimed by the IS group, suspected extremists killed 14 people and left 120 wounded, using vehicles to mow down pedestrians in Barcelona on Thursday and in the nearby seaside resort of Cambrils early on Friday.


Spain has five decades of experience of fighting against the Basque separatist group ETA, which killed over 800 people until it declared a ceasefire in 2011.


But it was jolted to another dimension of terrorism in 2004. On March 11 that year, bombs packed with nails exploded on four commuter trains heading into Madrid, killing 191 people and injuring nearly 2,000.


In the aftermath of the carnage, Madrid overhauled its security forces.


Additionally, “self-indoctrination” over the internet with the intent of carrying out an attack became a crime in 2015.


But the extremist threat has risen since 2016, when websites named as a target ‘Al Andalus’, the name of Spanish territories governed until 1492 by Muslims better known as Moors.


Experts are particularly worried about the concentration of extremists in Catalonia, home to the biggest community of Muslims in Spain.


Muslims number 1.9 million in the country of 47 million inhabitants. Most of them are North Africans, with Moroccans topping the list.


Catalonia has seen a long history of extremist activity.


Spain’s first extremist, a member of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA), was uncovered in the state in 1995.


Mohammed Atta, the pilot who slammed a passenger plane into one of New York’s World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001, spent time in Catalonia shortly before the attacks.


In 2008, a plot targeting Barcelona’s underground trains was foiled when it was already in advanced stages.


The state is also now home to a significant number of second-generation immigrants. Among them is the group of youths believed to have carried out this past week’s deadly attacks.


Most were children of Moroccan immigrants who had grown up in Ripoll, a town at the foot of the Pyrenees mountains.


The town is frequented by tourists, and its unemployment rate is not particularly high.


But police warn it may have been a case of rapid radicalisation, with the suspects turning to extremism in just a few months. — AFP


Adrien Vicente and Michaela Cancela-Kieffer


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