In 2017, a 22-year-old Moroccan drove a van into pedestrians on La Rambla in Barcelona, killing 13 people and injuring at least 130 others. Nine hours later, five men thought to be members of the same terrorist cell drove into pedestrians in nearby Cambrils, killing one woman and injuring six others.

All attackers were shot and eventually killed by police, while a 40-year-old imam, reported to have been the mastermind behind the attack, was killed the day before in an explosion with two other members.

That was the official version of the attack claimed to have been linked with ISIL, yet suspicions have been that the plot may not have been quite so simplistic. As reported on page 10 a former police commissioner suggested in the Spanish High Court that the series of attacks were orchestrated by the country’s Secret Service to destabilise

Catalonia ahead of an independence referendum. The imam, implicated in previous terrorist and criminal activities, has also been alleged to have been an informant of the National Intelligence Center. The independence referendum was declared illegal by the Spanish Government before sending in the police to brutally attack.

In the immediate days after the attacks, Spain was described as a model of solidarity. Yet whatever is the truth about conspiracies, the example of Barcelona adds to what has been a failure of the “war on terror” in a growing list of attacks that have included in Brussels, Paris, Berlin, London, Manchester, Nice, Istanbul, several in the US and in many other countries and not least Afghanistan. Regardless of what we read, the result was stirring up as much anti-Muslim bigotry and Islamophobia as possible, a situation where no one will win.

Photo: Aftermath of the 2017 terrorist attack, photo taken from inside Restaurant Núria Las Ramblas, Barcelona, Spain on August 17, 2017 (Credit: Jimmy Baikovicius/Flickr)

Spain’s secret service orchestrated 2017 terror attacks, says former police commissioner