‘A year on, we’re more united than ever’

The president of the EU Pak Friendship Federation in Spain, Kamran Khan, has said that last year’s terror attacks in Barcelona and the seaside town of Cambrils did not harm the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims in Catalonia; on the contrary, he says that Catalan society is “more united than before.”

“Those who kill innocent people are terrorists, and nothing more; no matter whether they are christians, muslims or jewish,” says Khan. “There is a famous picture of a father who had lost his son [in the van attack] in La Rambla hugging an imam: this picture is worth a thousand, or millions of words.”

Many feared that the attacks, later claimed by the so-called Islamic State, could trigger Islamophobic attacks in Catalonia. Yet, according to Khan, they had the opposite effect.