Los silencios del 17-A

It was a fateful day. On August 17, 2017 (17-A), the world-famous Rambla de Barcelona became the unexpected epicenter of a major terrorist attack, the most serious of the entire decade in Spain, the effects of which would cause enormous dismay. A killer van driven by a jihadist ran over passers-by, peaceful tourists or visitors gathered on the most popular thoroughfare in a city that, like every summer, had been filled with international visitors. There were 14 fatalities and more than a hundred wounded. On the night of the same 17-A, other militants from the same jihadist group desperately tried to continue the massacre in Cambrils, a busy coastal town in Tarragona. One more person died before the four fundamentalists were killed by the Mossos d'Esquadra. Television journalist Anna Teixidor has spent two years investigating the attacks. It has been in the place where the terrorists grew up, the small Catalan city of Ripoll (Girona), which makes them a unique case, since, although of immigrant origin, they had received their education in our country. Anna Teixidor has also traveled to Morocco, France and Belgium to learn about her family origins and international connections. The silences of 17-A have emerged from this research work, an unpublished portrait of the authors of events that shocked the world, with only a few months to go before the trial of the surviving militants.