Homage to the 17th August victims

Barcelona will never forget the victims. Three years on and family members, city residents and political figures have returned to the Rambla to remember and pay homage to all the victims of the 17 August attacks, which led to 16 deaths and a further 100 injuries involving as many as 35 different nationalities.

17/08/2020 14:20 h

Ajuntament de Barcelona

 

Today, 17 August, the city paid its respects to the memory of the victims of the terrorist attack, paying homage to them in a ceremony at the Pla de l’Os, along the Rambla, by the Memorial.

The ceremony consisted of a minute’s silence, presided over by Ada Colau, the Mayor of Barcelona, and accompanied by the melody of the El cant dels ocells, performed by the cellist Paula Sánchez Lahoz, a student at the Liceu Conservatory. After the minute’s silence, those attending lay a wreath to mark the end of the ceremony.

Barcelona, a city of peace

2019 saw the official unveiling, next to the Mosaic by Joan Miró, of the Rambla Memorial, a memorial dedicated to the people who lost their lives during the terrorist attacks of 17 August 2017 in Barcelona and Cambrils and to the hundred or so people wounded, paying homage too to a city that did not give way to hate or fear.

The 12-metre-long plaque contains the phrase “May peace shield you, oh city of peace”, originally written in Arabic in one of the thousands of messages that citizens spontaneously left along the passage. The plaque also bears that message in Catalan, Spanish and English, and is accompanied by the drawing Barcelona, given by the artista Frederic Amat, and stating the precise date and time on which the attacks took place.

The citizens’ memorial

After the attack, people from all around spontaneously left over twelve thousand ítems and documents along the Rambla, in homage to the victims and as support to their families. These ítems and documents have been duly collected, inventoried and filed and available to consult since August 2018 from the Rambla 17A Memorial website.

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