Anna Teixidor (Figueres, 1978) published in 2020 the book Los silencios del 17-A (Diëresis), one of the best journalistic works to date on the attacks of August 17, 2017. Five years later she regrets that the victims, but also the environment of the young people integrated into the terrorist cell that carried out that attack, have not managed to heal their wounds. She has a lot to do.
Have we learned something from those facts and, if we have learned it, have we put it into practice?
I think we only talk about this on anniversaries. The rest of the time we look the other way. The attack raised uncomfortable questions such as, for example, what integration and coexistence meant... Resources have not been allocated to many young people of the same or similar age, not only of Moroccan origin but also young people born in Catalonia who even now, five years later, when we talk to them about this, it becomes clear that they are in a galloping duel.
In his book he talks about the empty identity of the young people who made up the cell. The void that Abdelbaki is Satty (the imam of Ripoll who led the cell), he was able to fill. Catalonia is a territory of very contrasting identities...
It has nothing to do with it. The Islamic State was joined by more than 5,000 people from all European countries, regardless of the social or political characteristics of each country. When Abdelbaki es Satty had not yet arrived in Ripoll in 2015, there were already people who were connected to the jihadist propaganda about the war in Syria and Iraq and who felt called by what was happening.
Paradoxically, a greater radicalization is observed in young people, many born here, than in parents who arrived in Spain.
The first generations come to work, but the second generations do ask questions. They see their parents adapted to Western culture, some, most of the parents of the young people in the cell, were illiterate, and the mothers barely spoke a language other than their own or related to other women than those around them immediate.
At one point in his book he wonders who those boys were who sat at the desks with "our children." Is there a them and an us?
Nerd. They were not others. They were us. The same friends and the people of Ripoll don't feel like the others. For that reason there is a duel that still survives because there was an esteem, a respect, an empathy.
But that empathy did not allow to detect the process of radicalization of the members of the cell.
Abdelbaki's way of acting is Satty always made it a priority not to be discovered. He closed the circle. People who were very close to some of those boys were about to denounce. So we have been told. At some point they thought they should report him. What went wrong here? Well, there was neither enough confidence nor the necessary empowerment to do it.
Can such an attack happen again?
Yes. What is evident is that the tools to avoid it have not been created. Today if a person observes that another is radicalized and is a loved one, the only thing he can do is report it to the Mossos, no mechanism has been created to advise people who have this casuistry. The prevention of radicalization is not on the public agenda.
Have you investigated the situation of the victims of the attack?
After working on this for three years, I needed to find the middle ground and searched for the survivors. It was essential. I have followed up. Of the survivors, what seems most shocking to me is that five years later there are still people who are still on August 17, 2017. They have not been able to overcome it. Many of these victims have not been recognized as such. That is very serious.
