Our Lost illusions

We had illusions, no reason. Now Barcelona. Before, Paris.

Before London. Going back in time: Stockholm, London, Berlin, Nice. In a little less than a year, eight assassinations with the same, scary, simple technique - hit a mob with a vehicle. Killers have no fantasy; we have no memory. It's human and understandable, this weakness. But we can't afford to.

Barcelona authorities have invited those present not to spread pictures and film footage of the attack. They've done it in Catalan and Spanish, National Police, through Tuiter. It wasn't worth it. Yesterday night you saw terrible images everywhere, shot closely: bodies on the ground, alone, in those terrible minutes between mass escape and return of collective consciousness. There are young, motionless children and women seen on the white waves of the Rambla sidewalk. They see unnatural troop posts, unripe clothing, scattered, warped shoes, blood that seems to be made up, cinematic.

They hear different cries and tongues. Voices that call out crying <x0hiyos de vendox1> (“biys of whores”) and “malditos” (<x6) But do you care about all this, the distant monsters of I SIS? Their idea of war is to kill young men walking, one Thursday night a summer night. If they have a god, who knows how ashamed they are of them.

Our horrors are added to the guilty shame of repeating. What can we say we haven't already said? What can we confess that we have not already confessed? Direct television broadcasts, Web sites, images, and news are similar to those marked by the summer of 2016 and then autumn and then winter and then spring 2017.

It's Barcelona's turn, along with London the European city of Europe. Happy crowd, mixed nations and generations, sun and holidays, the sea very close - the best of the continent - on one August day. Then the immigrants, the van, the very easy attack, people crying and running. Hypothets, arrests, fire exchanges. At least 13 people killed and 80 wounded, of which 15 were seriously injured. The city's son, Leo Messi, writes: “Barcelona, be strong”. But it's not enough. Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, Europe and we all need to be quiet. And let's see if, by chance, we did something wrong.

It may seem cruel to ask now: but how is it possible for a van to get into Ramblas, come down with zig-zage for 600 meters and get in front of the crowd at the peak of the tourist season? While the alarm level in Spain, for two years, is 4 out of 5? How has the famous promenade not been protected? The country is iconic: Like the Trafagar Square in London, Champs Elyses in Paris, Colossus in Rome, Dãomo in Milan. And there is no doubt that our Islamist enemies, through their domestic tools, seek this very thing: to strike symbolic sites in symbolic cities in order to amplify terror.

That doesn't make the attacks predictable. Absolute prevention is impossible, unfortunately. But the terrible operandi of ISIS terrorists seems clear. In addition to symbolic sites, they target places with many people: the starting mall, the Berlin Market, the concert at Manchester. Or stadiums, church. In a fear - inspiring kind of economy, they try to do a lot of damage in little space and time.

Consciousness does not make us immune, as we have seen; but a little less fragile, yes.

A second, bitter thought: the manner of the assassination demonstrates the desperate gestures of a potential force. There's nothing easier than killing a human being with a vehicle. The location of the attack is even more frightening. But it shows a demonstration that could have done without it that European security forces are doing a good job. The instruments of terrorism are stopped; terror artisans are at stake instead. To whom we should have understood the methods. With what happened last night, we realized it wasn't.

And another thought, painful: a major free continent like Europe cannot kneel in the face of the shocks of a primitive ideology, which is losing territory and support. Of course, we have repeated that too. Yet, on days like this, we need to repeat it with force. We need to understand how to dismantle the identity schizophrenics this time it seems that the killers have grown up among us but there is no doubt: the day when all this is going to end once and for all, is not distant.

But unfortunately we don't know how close he is. (Beppe Severgny) / Corriere della Sera In Albanian from the World.al