No one in Ripoll forgets where they were six years ago. On August 17, 2017, the residents of this municipality of 10,000 inhabitants (according to Idescat figures for 2022), discovered to their horror that six children from Morocco, raised and integrated in this town at the foot of the Pyrenees, carried out a terrorist attack in Barcelona and Cambrils that killed 16 people and left 160 injured. “Something broke inside of me,” many agree. No one was able to spot the radicalization of those six young people that, under the leadership of Imam Abdelbaki Es Satty, they committed the jihadist massacre.
After 17-A, Ripoll drew up a coexistence plan that came to nothing due to lack of budget
Six years later, that wound is far from healed. Xenophobia has broken out like pus that infects everything. The result of the municipal elections on May 28, which gave victory to Silvia Orriols, from the far-right pro-independence formation Aliança Catalana, uncovered the racism that has been years in the making.
“Ripoll avoided addressing the issue of the attacks in public and this helped the fascist message to sink in”
After 17-A, the neighbors they wanted to bury the pain underground, and then the pandemic only stung more. “We have not had the means to treat it as a society”, complain the professionals of the municipality who devised a plan to heal the wounds.
That summer, after the jihadist attacks, Ripoll was filled with politicians and experts with a single obsession: that coexistence not be broken, that the people continue to live in peace. What he worried about the most was going back to school, barely a month after the attack. “In the classrooms there were brothers of the terrorists that they were not to blame for what had happened. Classes had to start normally”, recalls a technician from the municipality. “We we feared a holy war at the school gates. It didn’t happen, and we all relaxed,” acknowledges the former mayor Jordi Munell.
boys preparing bombs
Ripoll’s racist disclosure has been openly revealed six years later. She has done it at the polls. Catalan Alliancethe only ultra party to stand in the municipal elections, tripled the result that the xenophobic parties obtained in 2019. What has changed?
“It all started when we learned the details of the summary of the attacks. The videos of the boys preparing the bombs caused a brutal impact and many began to see the immigrants with rage,” says a social worker from the municipality. The pandemic and inflation have added fuel to the fire. “The confinement has made us individualistic, selfish, there is more fear, especially among the elderly”Add.
“There is fear of immigrants, of the unknown. They see that the town is changing and nobody talks to them about this,” says a ‘mosso’
In the last six years, 400 immigrants have arrived in Ripoll, who have gone from representing 10% of the inhabitants to being 13%. Most have precarious jobs: cleaners, cooks, foresters, workers in slaughterhouses or in the few factories that remain standing. Ripoll has one of the lowest unemployment rates in Catalonia (7.8%). Others, without papers, cannot legally work and need social assistance.
The Maghrebi population is Amazig and Berber. “They are not cosmopolitans, they are people who comes from rural areassome illiterate and very traditional”, say the social educators. They fill the void left by the young people of the town, who they flee to Vic or Barcelona to work and study. And they live with 25% of the population over 65 years of age. “With a conservative spirit and almost medieval thinking,” according to social workers. They are traditional voters of the old Convergència and Junts who have gone over to the Orriols ultra discourse, according to several local politicians. “They have seen stores close, industries… and that these businesses are replaced by immigrant businesses. They lose their privileges.”
For this reason, the digestion of the attack has been a nightmare. The Mossos have also seen it. “We have the lowest crime rates in Catalonia but lThe feeling of insecurity is very high: the attacks are not free and many people are afraid of immigrants, of the unknown. They see that the town is changing and nobody talks to them about this”, a policeman comments to this newspaper. Some sensations that are confirmed in the educational environment: “There are more and more students who have recently arrived and parents comment that the educational level drops“.
No means for coexistence
Already in 2017, many warned that this could happen. Ripoll elaborated a coexistence plan with concrete actions to take. “Both the older than Ripoll as the Moroccan community They are closed and conservative. To avoid confrontation, you had to mix them up, get to know each other and break barriers. We needed resources and political will. Nobody has been interested and we have not been able to do it,” municipal employees complain. “We asked for funds but we have been left with the same budget as before the attacks,” they lament. “And with the little we did, hardly any people came “, they riveted.
The teachers consulted assume that the issue has not been addressed in the classrooms unless the children asked for it. “There was no conflict or very obvious rejection,” says the director of a school. “We have passed a thick veil, we have never dealt with it in the classroom“, continues a teacher from the Abat Oliba public institute. “Ripoll avoids the issue of attacks in public: we put dirt on top and wash the dirty laundry at home, that nothing has happened here. And this has helped the fascist message to sink in and hate to explode”, sums up Carmen Brugarola, member of the Unitat Against Feixisme and Racism of Ripoll.
“We have passed a thick veil and we have not discussed the issue at school”
While the administrations did not talk about the attack, Sílvia Orriols sand was planted with a tent spreading fear and distrust towards immigrants every market day. He asked for telephone numbers and created a WhatsApp group where he shared conflicts with migrants, despite the fact that they did not occur in Ripoll. “Nobody has fought it”, they assume brugarola and munell. “We did not want to give importance to it, we thought that people would not pay attention to it.”
In schools, what happened on 17-A was worked on the first year with workshops groups with teachers. “They mourned the deaths of their students, it was a forbidden pain”, says an employee of the territorial services of Educació in Ripollès. In 2018, Educació included Ripoll in a pilot project already finished. “Our obsession was that everyone had the same opportunities. We learned from the attack that there are children who feel second-rate,” says former mayor Munell.
The money that the Generalitat contributed, 70,000 euros a year, was dedicated to social services. The same thing happened in civic centers. “We have not gone further, the free extracurricular projects have been monopolized by immigrant children. There has been no coexistence,” suggests a worker.
“Social benefits are very good, but We are not talking about coexistence, migration… of the issues that must be addressed at Ripoll”, insists a specialized worker. These professionals continue to emphasize the lack of means. Ripoll belongs to the municipalities with less educational spending in Catalonia and it doesn’t count with public mental health centers. “The psychological consequences are not treated, neither those left by the attack nor the others,” insists the Educació employee.
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The discrimination, stigma, suspicion and fracture that Ripoll lives are not obvious. But it is enough to talk to his neighbors to see the enormous division that exists. The few social entities of the town They have already set to work to apply, through volunteering, what the administrations have not done. “We have no choice. The future of the town is at risk,” say those involved.
Ripoll is the bed of two rivers, a transit area since medieval times. This is demonstrated by the more than 15 bridges that hold the municipality together. Today, those who unite the neighbors are broken.