The Barcelona and Cambrils Attacks: A Case Study of the Impact of Political Decentralization and Separatism on Counter Terrorism Policing

This article analyses how counter terrorism policing before and after the August 2017 jihadi attacks in Catalonia was negatively affected by two factors: the Spanish policing model based on a decentralized security system and the independentist challenge posed by the Catalan Government. Firstly, the article assesses the political and legal framework vis-à-vis security in a quasi-federal democracy like Spain. Secondly, it analyzes how the police response to the jihadist threat was impacted by this multilayer system structured around a central government, seventeen autonomous regions, two autonomous cities, and over eight thousand local councils. Thirdly, the article examines how the challenge posed by independentists in the Autonomous region of Catalonia, who in 2017 attempted to break away from Spain in defiance of the Spanish Constitution, exacerbated the structural problems of the security system. It concludes that the combination of several factors in a particularly conflictive political environment led to the failure of counter terrorism policing on three levels: proactive, preventive, and reactive.