17-A. Most Barcelonans perfectly remember where we were and what we were doing when, on August 17, four years ago, Islamist terrorism caused a massacre on La Rambla in Barcelona, through a deliberate mass run-over. Fifteen people died and more than a hundred were injured to varying degrees.
That day, I was at the antipodes of Barcelona. Not in the geographical sense of the term ---the antipodes of Catalonia, understood as the furthest point on the terrestrial globe, are in New Zealand---, but in the sense that I was in a place, the Faroe Islands, diametrically opposite to everything that, for better or worse, Barcelona represents, especially in the middle of August: heat, hundreds of thousands of tourists, a great gastronomic, hotel, and commercial offer; a city that boils with activity. The Faroes, for those who don't know, are a remote archipelago made up of eighteen rocky, grass-covered islands, where just under 50,000 inhabitants and about 80,000 sheep live scattered, located in the middle of the North Atlantic.
After spending several days exploring its islands practically alone, well-bundled up and without an Internet connection ---four years ago we still allowed ourselves this small luxury---, on 17-A I was in the Faroese capital, Tórshavn, a city of just over 13,000 inhabitants. I remember sitting in a cafe and when I connected to the establishment's Wi-Fi, my phone started to boil with messages. Barcelona was suffering a terrorist attack. The information offered by the media was still very confusing, but gruesome videos of the run-over on La Rambla began to circulate on WhatsApp, followed by handfuls of messages from family and friends to confirm that everyone was well and in a safe place. What a strange sensation to know that your city is experiencing hours of panic while around you, the most absolute calm and tranquility reign.
On 17-A I was in the Faroese capital, Tórshavn, a city of just over 13,000 inhabitants. I remember sitting in a cafe and when I connected to the establishment's Wi-Fi, my phone started to boil with messages.9/11. Most of us also haven't forgotten where we were and what we were doing when, on September 11, 2001, televisions around the world broadcast live the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York, the most iconic image of a series of suicide attacks perpetrated by the Al Qaeda terrorist network against the United States. In retaliation, a few months later, the Bush administration undertook what they pompously calledWar on Terrorism.
Afghanistan was the first country the Americans targeted, arguing that the sinister Taliban regime was hiding Osama bin Laden, leader of Al Qaeda and considered the mastermind of 9/11. They specifically called the Afghan war Operation Enduring Freedom, but time has shown that it has provided neither one nor the other to the poor Afghans. What's more, next 9/11, the bearded fundamentalists that the US war machine has been unable to defeat, despite the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by the war and its millionaire costs, will be able to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the 2001 attacks sprawled once again in the seats of power in Kabul, the capital.
1-O. October 1, 2017, was also a key date for Barcelona residents and, evidently, for the rest of Catalans. Not only because of the events that occurred on the day of the Catalonia independence referendum, but also because of the personal and collective consequences that those events have had throughout these four years, effects that are still felt and that, possibly, will extend over time.
17-A, 11-S, 1-O... Historical numeronyms are dates expressed in an abbreviated form that bring to mind events of great collective transcendence and that, for each of us, are intimately linked to a personal experience. In my case, 17-A will always remind me of the Faroe Islands. Where were you and what were you doing that day? And on 9/11? And on 1-O? We often remember personal experiences not because they were particularly important but because they coincided with great historical events.
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