Julian Cadman, the Australian boy who died in the attack on the Rambla on August 17, 2017, did not get the respect he deserved yesterday in Barcelona. Sitting in a chair, Jumarie Querimit Cadman cried with the photo of her son on her lap as other victims came to hug her.
The mayor of the city, Ada Colau, crouched next to her and held her hands to accompany her in the duel. It was a few minutes before ten o'clock, when the act began, and there was already something in the atmosphere, beyond the threat of rain, that was disturbing. Suddenly, Jumarie's inconsolable pain was interrupted by screams that plunged her into bewilderment. A noisy group broke the solemn silence of the white carnations with their insults. Summoned by a pro-independence platform that blames the State for the attacks, they claimed to demand justice and truth, but they were there to boycott the tribute.
In the Pla de l'Ós, where there is the mosaic by Joan Miró on which the van stopped after running over whoever it encountered in its path, and where the memorial in honor of the victims is located, the Veus choir was barely able to impose its music about the protesters' outbursts. Nor did the presenter of the act, the poet Fátima Saheb, manage to silence the fans by recalling the phrase that, in various languages, appears on the monument: "May peace cover you, oh, city of peace." There was no such peace.
The minute of silence prior to the floral offering was barely respected, in which first the victims and their relatives and then the authorities placed their white flowers in large pots while El cant dels ocells was played. Cries of “Spain is a state of murderers! We want the truth, you hypocrites!” accompanied the piece for cello by Pau Casals.
Jumarie will not be able to forget the anguish experienced in Barcelona. For what happened in 2017, when her son was reported missing until it was confirmed that he had died while she was seriously ill in a city hospital, and because yesterday she could not understand anything when she got up from her chair to leave her carnation , to whom she gave a kiss dissolved in tears, in the middle of the shouting.
In the turn of the politicians and the security forces, the voices were exalted. “Shame”, they shouted at the delegation headed by the president, Pere Aragonès. But that accusation became a boomerang, because the majority feeling was shame, yes, but because of the transformation of a civic act into an embarrassing spectacle.
From her place among the institutional representatives, where she was as president of Junts having been suspended as a deputy despite not having resigned as president of the Parliament, Laura Borràs approached the protesters, who acclaimed her shouting “president! , Chairwoman!". Two hours later, and when the shouts were “Aragonès, botifler! (traitor)”, she herself reappeared before the European Union delegation in Barcelona, in another protest called by the same demonstrators on the Rambla, where they had come to confront relatives of the victims who made their hostility and contempt ugly.
After the act, Colau asked for a "critical reflection" on what happened. "It seems to me a profound lack of respect," said the mayor, for whom boycotting the tribute to the victims "in a partisan way is the height of shame."
