In politics, it seems that anything goes has been consolidated. Last week, without going any further, a terrorist was allowed – in fact, asked – to sit in a citizen representation body to give his opinion. The kind invitation was received from Junts por Catalunya. We hope that Míriam Nogueras's people are satisfied with the result: that a fanatic who was preparing bombs to blow up the Camp Nou or the Sagrada Família was rewarded with a few undeserved minutes of glory.
If I, who was lucky enough not to suffer directly the effects of the attacks, felt struck by the sight of the jihadist in Congress, I cannot imagine how the survivors and the victims' families must have experienced it. My stomach turns when I remember that August afternoon and those kids who kept appearing on the screens, so familiar that they could have been "one of mine." Among the many snapshots of those days, there is one that has stayed with me: that of that young man, head down and handcuffed, wearing blue pyjamas. I know that the pyjamas were from the hospital, but from then on I have always imagined him inside the house in Alcanar, preparing the "mother of Satan" with that homely, familiar outfit. And thinking of a terrorist who sleeps and eats and does everything like everyone else, but also makes bombs, is disturbing to me. Of course, what did I think? Terrorists also have pyjamas. Except that the young man would have put them on to massacre multitudes. He did not want to kill someone specific and known for whom he felt an animosity arising from some personal conflict, no, but his desire, his objective, was to kill many unknown people to inoculate the poison of fear in the consciences of those who survived them. And in the process, to disturb coexistence by installing distrust towards all those who could be seen as him because they have the same religion, nationality or origin. It was the rest of us, those of us who aspired to the surname Houli, who had to explain that we have nothing to do with someone who could imagine and coldly plan that atrocity. That the convicted terrorist is not "one of us" became even clearer to me when I saw him before the politicians and with a hard face he allowed himself to show a cosmetic, superficial and opportunistic repentance by presenting himself as a victim. He rejected any assumption of responsibility saying that he was already convicted and that what had to be done was to look for those who allowed the imam to eat their heads. Although he did not rescue the ignominy of the "intellectual authors" of 11-M. That Puigdemont applauded the stellar appearance of the convicted man with a "he cannot say it more clearly" and gave credibility to his words denotes a sad moral defeat and very little concern for the victims, even though it was said that it was for them that Houli's appearance had been requested. We had reproached the Spanish right for the partisan instrumentalisation of ETA terrorism. I hope that the Junts people have found the unbearable disgust they have given us worthwhile, that they take advantage of the statements of the aspiring mass murderer. His refusal to answer the questions of the deputies, including Pilar Calvo, who reminded us that Houli had not killed anyone (we will still have to thank her for having stayed in Alcanar), was a humiliation that we did not deserve. And that the deputy ended up talking about integration and making public the name of the terrorist's sister without it having anything to do with the subject at hand shows that at this time we still have not understood that jihadism is about ideology and fanaticism, and not about incorporation into the host society.
