La Rambla in Barcelona, its most famous, noisy, vibrant and dynamic arterythe heart that makes the very center of the Catalan capital beat every day and night, which shows its splendor and misery like a large showcase open to the world, and which welcomes anyone who wants to cross it without questions and without hesitation, You will live this Wednesday 17 August, a busy day you never wanted to experience. Five years have passed since the attack with which, the most smiling and noisy of the streets of Barcelona, remained silent and dressed in death, pain and unreason.
That 17-A of 2017 at 4:51 pm, Younes Abouyaaqoub entered the Rambla through its access from via Pelai and he crossed the 800 meters that separate the highest point from the iconic mosaic in a rental van that the great Catalan painter Joan Miró left imprinted on the floor for posterity.
The young member of the jihadist cell, of 10 members, from Ripoll (Girona) and responsible for that black day in Barcelona and Cambrils (Tarragona), where five terrorists were killed and a woman was killed, took the lives of 16 people and injured 137 by doing eses with a vehicle who, seeing himself blocked by the victims, had to leave to escape through the chaos that he himself had sown. Abouyaaqoub, 20, was shot by Catalan police in Subirats, near Vilafranca del Penedès (Tarragona), four days later, on 21 August.. But, unfortunately, the massacre had already been consummated.
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Although La Rambla and its inhabitants, permanent or temporary, have since made an effort not to lose the joyful essence of the place, those who walk it cannot escape a certain memory of that fateful day, not even five years later. An overwhelming inner silence takes hold of one when crossing points that were recorded in the collective retina that day: the Miró mosaic, the Mercat de la Boqueria (through which the terrorist escaped on foot) or the beginning of the Rambla at the confluence with Carrer de Pelai, where the van entered, and which since December 2017 is protected by bollards and concrete stops.
Two different tributes
This Wednesday will be a difficult memory for the physical and emotional victims of the terrible terrorist attack, who will join in two acts of remembrance. The first is organized by Barcelona City Hallwho is the one who provides support to those affected locally, and takes place from 10 am in the Miró mosaic. The victims and their relatives and friends, politicians and citizens, in that order, will lay flowers in the deposits which will at this point be deposited for this purpose. There will also be a children’s musical choir and there will be a minute of silence.
The second tribute is carried out by the Catalan Association of Victims of Terrorist Organizations (ACVOT)what advises and provides cover only to the foreign victims of the attack. They help affected Italians, Canadians, Australians and Latin Americans. José Vargas, its president, speaks with 20 minutes eg and comments that this duplicity of acts occurs from the zero minute of the massacre for reasons rather of political competence between the central administration, with which they coordinate (Ministry of the Interior), and the local and Catalan administration (consistory and Generalitat), suggests
Vargas assures it 96 people recognized as victims by the Ministry of the Interior and 24 validated As directly interested parties they represent, they have already received the relevant compensation. All suffered physical and / or psychological damage and consequences. A total of 76 people were affected in La Rambla, 8 in Cambrils and 9 others in the explosion of the squat house in Alcanar (Tarragona) on August 16, 2017, in which the cell was preparing explosives for his plan A, which interrupted the explosion of the dozens of butane cylinders they had stored to attack and which killed Ripoll’s imam, Abdelbaki Es Satty, a 44-year-old Moroccan and brain of the group, already Youssef Aalla, then 22 years old. And where one of those convicted of these acts, Mohamed Houli Chemlal, 22, was injured.
The sentence of the High National Court names 355 victims recognized in the two attacks (288 in the massive outrage in Barcelona, 28 in Cambrils and three during the terrorist’s escape from La Rambla). Two of the three accused of the sentence must compensate 35 people physically or psychologically affected by the Alcanar explosion and another 29 people and companies for material damage. 40% of those affected have already been repaired.
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The interior confirmed this 20 minutes eg which, to date, it has allocated overall 7.33 million euros in compensation to victims (7,338,798.78 euros)among these, the agent Mossos who killed the five Cambrils terrorists in the early hours of August 18, 2017. Of the 355 affected who appear in the sentence, 216 asked the Ministry for some form of help or compensation within the one-year term established by law. And 130 got it. Of the remaining 86 people, 84 files have been closed and the other two are currently awaiting resolution.
Instead, the uUnit for the attention and evaluation of people affected by terrorism (UAVAT)born after these attacks and made up of psychologists, forensic scientists and psychiatrists, participated under an agreement signed with the Municipality of Barcelona to 210 affected, of which 117 have proceeded to the recognition of victims at the Interior terrorism and the possibility of psychological assistance.
In 2021 this association ensured that 77 people have already been compensated by the Interior and at the same time denounced that 80% of the 355 victims recognized by justice (74 for psychological damage) had not yet received any official communication of their situation nor any attention. Of the 248 people not treated, 135 suffered from psychological problems, 73 physical and the rest both.
Still locating the victims
Robert Manrique, advisor to this entity, and also a victim of the Hipercor attack perpetrated by ETA 35 years ago, deals with 20 minutes eg and says that since 2017 “they try to locate” on their own “all the people who appear in the judicial ruling of May 2021, not definitive, by judge Alfonso Guevara “. They are the 345 cited and include the physical and psychological victims (to the latter the sentence could constitute a precedent) of the explosion in the house of Alcanar and in the attacks of Cambrils and Barcelona, and which includes Mossos and local police on duty in those three dates.
Manrique confirms that the localization task they are carrying out at their own risk, both in Spain and abroad (there are people affected from 31 different countries and calculates that 250 of those cited in the judgment have not been contacted to be informed of this recognition as victims) is motivated by something that the judge states in the sentence itself: “That the victims were the great ones forgotten in education”.
This happens because not all of these people participated in the criminal trial. 20% did so represented by the 11-M association, another 10% for other private charges and the rest, mostly, by the Prosecutor’s Office, over 200, of which it is not known whether they have carried out administrative procedures for their recognition. Furthermore, the entity does not have access to the personal data of the data subjects, however the administration does.
On the other hand, the association accuses Interior (the UAVAT collaborates with the Generalitat and the Municipality of Barcelona) of not having recognized the status of victims of some of the people they represent as an association. Give an example a Sílvia and Marta, two customers of the pharmacy where one of the minors who died on La Rambla was seriously injured and who assisted him until his death. Or two girls in their twenties who were denied recognition “presenting previous pathologies of bulimia and anorexia”. The work will multiply once the sentence is final, we will proceed to “examine file by file and prove the consequences after the attacks” to access the compensation or recalculate it.
The association is currently working on another case, that of the daughter of a Catalan woman who died on La Rambla on 17-A, and who three months after the incident was contacted online by a private lawyer who processed the compensation and gave him charged a 15% fee. “We have never charged one euro in commission for the same work. That man pocketed 30 thousand euro for a signature.”Manrique denounces.
Another example of “helplessness” of victims and relatives that came to them is that of a Venezuelan girl residing in Madrid who was hit by the jihadist and who was hospitalized at the Hospital Clínic, where she was operated on. Then, already in Madrid, she had to undergo another operation due to the consequences of the accident, at the Gregorio Marañón hospital.
Two years later, in 2019, she watched the act for the second anniversary of the massacre on television and, seeing herself involved as affected, went to the 11-M victims’ association, which informed the UAVAT. “We process the recognition as a victim and the Intern replies that it is outside the legal period of one year”Manrique explains, regretting that with this answer “they didn’t even go in to evaluate it”.
When asked how it can be that there are direct victims of the fatal outrage who have not felt such from the first moment, he clarifies: “This girl hadn’t thought until then that she had any right to what happened. The first thing we do when we have a car accident is to call insurance and then our loved ones to tell them we’re fine. In an attack, the first thing you do is check that you are alive. And once he’s healed, you think the authorities will call you, and if they don’t, you think it’s because they don’t have to. ”
He also complains about the little attention they have received from political authorities. “The only mayor who called us days after what happened, outside the city hall of Barcelona, was that of Sant Celoni (Barcelona), and also a councilor from Badalona (Barcelona). “Likewise, he regrets it There is no regional law on the victims of terrorism in Catalonialike those they have in Aragon, Cantabria, Andalusia or La Rioja.
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Reduced sentence for two of the condemned
The Court of Appeal of National CourtOn July 13 he reduced the sentences of two members of the jihadist cell: a Mohamed Houli Chemlal (53 to 43 years in prison) and Driss Oukabir (46 to 36 years). This decision has no effect as the maximum penalty of 20 years of imprisonment is maintained for both membership in a terrorist organization, manufacture of explosives and for terrorist acts. The court maintains the eight-year prison sentence for Said Ben Iazza, who was released in September last year after four years in interim prison. Vargas, of ACVOT, says he “respects and abides” to any judicial decision even though he “disagrees as a democratic citizen”. And he adds: “The victims are still forgotten”.
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