Wednesday, August 23, 2017

neo-neocon » Blog Archive » Catalonia and terrorism; Spain and Moroccan immigration

neo-neocon » Blog Archive » Catalonia and terrorism; Spain and Moroccan immigration
Catalonia and terrorism; Spain and Moroccan immigration
"It might seem that the perps in the Barcelona and Cambrils attacks should have been easier to detect because this was a multi-person cell, a group rather than a lone wolf. 
Nevertheless, not a single one of the people involved, at least 12 at last count, appears even to have been on the authorities’ radar screen.
This article explores why that might have been:
…Catalonia is a particularly problematic case. In the past, various Catalan nationalist politicians preferred to import North African labor (even though they sometimes referred to them as “the Moors”) rather than those from elsewhere in Spain…

More recently, on such a basic matter as fundamental defensive measures adopted by many European cities after Nice and London—the placing of obstacles along wide pedestrian thoroughfares like Las Ramblas—Catalan authorities allegedly wanted to show they would take an approach different from Madrid. So, no bollards to stop a vehicle from blasting through pedestrians.

Intelligence sharing with the central government may also have been affected, making it more difficult to tie together threads that stretch across regional borders, let alone international ones.
According to the article, Catalonia appears to be a central location for terrorists in Spain. The Catalan authorities seem fiercely independent:
But conflicting reports suggest that in the immediate aftermath of the explosion in Alcanar, where multiple propane gas canisters were discovered, the Catalan police refused the assistance of TEDAX, a unit of the Spanish government with long experience dismantling bombs and investigating explosive evidence dating back through decades of Basque separatist terrorism. If true, valuable hours may have been lost as the killers raced to go into action.
After reading that I became curious about Catalonia’s history. Reading about it...
...I also learned that the perpetrators of the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, a horrific attack that killed 192 and injured around 2,000, were predominently Moroccans.
Spain and Morocco share a border, but it’s a “wet” border—the narrow Straits of Gibraltar...
...Some history...
There’s much more at the link.
Read it all!

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