Five years have passed, but the memory of the victims is still very much alive. The boulevards of Barcelona have once again filled with people and white carnations to remember the 16 dead and 130 injured in the terrorist attacks on August 17.
On the same day in 2017, shortly after 5 p.m., a van sped onto the busy boulevard. At the wheel, Younes Abouyaaqoub zigzagged down the street trying to kill as many lives as possible.
Pablo Sebastián does not remove it from his memory. He was off work for 11 months because he couldn’t walk after being run over. “I fell into the front of the van on its side. I put my head and arms against the glass but was thrown and crashed into a pillar. The woman next to me was killed,” he says.
At night, other jihadists killed another person in the coastal town of Cambrils before being killed by the police.
This Wednesday mothers and children, brothers and neighbors have observed a minute of silence in honor of the deceased.
The institutional representatives, located in the second row, have given them the leading role, in an act that has been marred by the shouts and booing of a group of independentistas demanding “truth” from the Spanish Government.
