King Felipe joins thousands in Barcelona anti-terror march
BARCELONA: Hundreds of thousands of peace marchers flooded the heart of Barcelona shouting “I’m not afraid” – a public rejection of violence following extremist attacks that killed 16 people, Spain’s deadliest in more than a decade.
Emergency workers, taxi drivers, policemen and ordinary citizens, who helped immediately after the Aug 17 attack in the city’s famed Las Ramblas boulevard, led the march on Saturday.
They carried a street-wide banner with black capital letters reading No Tinc Por, which means “I’m not afraid” in the local Catalan language.
The phrase has grown from a spontaneous civic answer to violence into a slogan that Spain’s entire political class has unanimously embraced.
Spain’s central, regional and local authorities tried to send an image of unity on Saturday by walking behind emergency workers, despite earlier criticism that national and regional authorities had not shared information about the attackers well enough with each other.
In a first for a Spanish monarch, King Felipe VI joined a public demonstration, along with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and other Spanish and Catalan regional officials.
Still, some citizens whistled their displeasure as authorities passed by and held banners criticising the king’s role in promoting military exports to Saudi Arabia.
Barcelona police said some 500,000 people showed up at the march.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the vehicle attacks in Barcelona and hours later in the coastal town of Cambrils that left 16 dead and over 120 wounded.
The investigation into the extremist cell behind the attacks has shown that the group planned even more deadly carnage, but accidently blew up a house in Alcanar, where explosives were being built and gas tanks were being stored.
Eight suspects are dead, two in jail under preliminary charges of terrorism and homicide, and two more freed by a judge, but will remain under investigation. — AP