Targeting Barcelona was sadly predictable—Spain holds both historic and modern importance to jihadists

Spain has erred on the side of caution ever since and as countries around the world stepped-up their roles in a US-led coalition against Isil in Iraq, the country remained a reluctant partner. But just because Spain had little appetite to confront Isil, the group still showed interest in Spain.  

The country has been identified as a key target on extremist websites for historical reasons, given that Muslims ruled in Spain for close to eight centuries until 1492, a fact that informs Isil’s central narrative in the fight against the “crusaders”. In January 2016, the terrorist organization issued a chilling video threatening to launch attacks in Spain and to reconquer the territory of the Iberian Peninsula that previously was part of the Islamic caliphate. “We will recover our land from the invaders”, Isil vowed in the video message…

Isil could not be clearer about its intention: “Even if you were to stop fighting us, your best-case scenario in a state of war would be that we would suspend our attacks against you … before eventually resuming our campaigns”, they wrote in Dabiq. “So in the end, you cannot bring an indefinite halt to our war against you. At most, you could only delay it temporarily.”

It is an uncomfortable truth to accept for it sheds light on the real magnitude of the threat that we face, above all the admission that the options we have to stop, or at least contain, the global Islamist insurgency are limited. There is no common ground, no basis for negotiation with people that strap suicide belts around children to usher in an era of Islamic theocracy in which life as we know it would no longer exist.