Is Barcelona Safe from Terrorism?
 

Hello, I am an architecture student who is studying abroad Fall 2016. I currently signed up for the Barcelona semester, however with the recent ISIS attack in Paris I am paranoid. I did research and Spain, France, and Portugal are all high risk for terrorism, and that article was before the attack in Paris, proving the article credibility. I also read that Spanish authorities arrested ISIS radicals plotting in Madrid earlier this month. Barcelona does not have a record of terrorism like Madrid, but in study abroad, I will have field trips across Spain (Including Madrid and Southern Spain). I will be in Barcelona for a whole semester. My school also has an alternative trip next Fall, in Urbino Italy. I could possibly switch if I did it right away because I have to start making payments in January, because Study abroad is required. Italy has a lower threat of terrorism then Spain and I would spend most of my time in Urbino, a small town. Although, we do travel to Rome, Florence, and Venice. I know this is a year away, but I have to decide now and ISIS might still be around next year. Where would be safer, Italy or Spain? Thanks for your help and opinions.

No place is safe from terrorism, but the odds are distinctly long. You may recall that we had a small incident here in NYC a few years back. I would guess that the odds are longer yet in Urbino, but there is no way to know. Everyone has a different tolerance for risk -- follow your instincts. If you are frightened you will not get the most from your experience.

No one can honestly answer this question for you. Any city in any country can be subject to crazy, unpredictable acts such as what happened to Paris. Who knows?? Here in Australia, we are rated as 'high' for terror alert too. But we still go on our holidays. Wherever you go - be it in Barcelona, Italy or your own home town - you just need to make the decision to get on with your life, and not succumb to fear.

Many more die from violence in the U.S. every year than in any place in Europe. Guns, auto crashes, etc., etc., etc. No matter where in the world you are, there is no guarantee that you are free from some danger.
Go and enjoy every minute of your experience!

Agree that no place is truly safe from terrorism. Nor has it been since shortly after WWII. If you are going to worry to this extent now about terrorism you are going to make your whole life very difficult.

The truth is any plane can crash, natural disasters can strike almost anywhere, anyone in a car can be hit by a drunken driver - life is never totally safe.

So I would figure out which makes the most sense in terms of your education - and just go there - unless it's the middle of an active war zone.

You are much more likely to get killed in a car wreck or by guns here in the US than to die in Europe.

The terrorists try to instill fear. The media assists them by hocusing on it and shouting about it (to attract more ears and eyes,hence more profits) - and thus increase the fear.

But look at statistics.

Yes, travel seems un-nerving and worrisome ... but to put it in perspective, a very quick google search shows it's safer in Europe than the US:

Population US in 2015: 320,100,000; the European Union: 508,200,000

Traffic deaths in US in 2013: 32,719 = ~ 10 per 100,000 people
Traffic deaths in the EU in 2011: ~30,000 = ~ 6 per 100,000 people

Gun deaths in US in 2013: 32,719 = ~ 10 per 100,000 people
Gun deaths in France in 2007: ~ 3 per 100,000 people *
Gun deaths in Germany in 2010 = ~ 1 per 100,000 people *
Gun deaths in the UK in 2013 = ~ 0.26 per 100,000 people *

Above figures are from a variety of years, so aren't totally comparative, but do give a fairly accurate picture
* I couldn't fine the gun deaths for all of the EU, so listed some typical countries, and are before the recent events.

But...

France's population is 61.9 million ... 150 gun deaths by terrorists only raises their gun death by 0.24 per 100,000 for an overall total of 3.25 per 100,000 compared to US at 10 per 100,000.

Still, one always needs be careful, regardless of whether you are here in the US or in Europe. One has to be aware wherever one is.

No one can assure another's safety, but more people lost their lives in 2004 during the attack on Atocha Station in Madrid. Chances are Madrid would be the target, if Spain was the target.

The press and people's reactions are more prejudiced than anything else. The week there was Charlie Hebdo massacre, 2000 Nigerians were slaughtered by Muslim extremists. The march and slogans were for the French.

We can 'bet' as to where the next attack will take place.
Bruxelles ?
I'm pretty sure I can safely in a few years retrieve this post and you'll give me 'credibility'.

Your call to decide what you do with your life.

Many US people died in WW2 liberating Europe.
Along with some others. It is for you to decide how you behave.
But avoid US schools, seems there is a shooting there quie often. I read it in a paper. Whihc was proven credible.

How would a travel site know the answer to that? If you need to ask, and seeing the eay you have, I would suggest staying at home if you feel safer there.

Pariswat is correct. Since the school shooting at Sandy, Hook, CT, there have been almost 150 more school shootings.

There are definitely different levels of risk in different places, and there are many places in the world I would not go to now due to exposure to violence and the determination of terrorists to strike at particular targets. There are even different levels of risk within Europe, so your question is not stupid at all.

The information you are reading about Urbino being at much less exposure to terrorism is correct, although Barcelona is not a particular target of ISIS. Getting to and from these places using public transportation, airports, airlines, you face the same risks as everyone worldwide.

This is a personal comfort zone issue. You've done research, and I don't think more research is going to add much. You need to understand that you may not be much more protected from violent assault/mass shooter attack staying home than if you travel to Europe. Your call.

agreed, you are paranoid. :-)

Nope, Barcelona is not safe.

However, neither is your local university, your church, your movie theater, your workplace, your concert hall, your job.

Sheltering in place in your home might be safe, but it's hard to survive that way.

Sadly this is our new reality.

It sounds like OP is a US student. Just to give you food for thought on the "safety" issue see here

http://shootingtracker.com/wiki/Mass_Shootings_in_2015

According to this site in the US in 2015 there have been 393 killed in mass shootings and over 1,100 more injured.

Hit post too soon.

I think we all have to accept this is our reality and decide what we can deal with. For me, I will continue to travel. I can't quit living and hide under the bed so....

People who parrot statistics that they don't understand should parrot statistics.

"Gun deaths in US in 2013: 32,719 = ~ 10 per 100,000 people
Gun deaths in France in 2007: ~ 3 per 100,000 people *
Gun deaths in Germany in 2010 = ~ 1 per 100,000 people *
Gun deaths in the UK in 2013 = ~ 0.26 per 100,000 people *"

Statistics like this are thoroughly misleading. The vast majority of gun deaths in the US are among gang members. When they are removed, US gun deaths are not remarkably higher than other places in the world.

"Traffic deaths in US in 2013: 32,719 = ~ 10 per 100,000 people
Traffic deaths in the EU in 2011: ~30,000 = ~ 6 per 100,000 people"

Also completely misleading. A much higher percentage of people in the US own cars and they drive on average many many more miles per year. The average driver on the average trip is probably safer in the US since the roads are generally better.

As far as terrorism is concerned, your chances of being picked pocketed or mugged by Eastern European thugs is much higher than chances of terrorism in Barcelona. BUT

1. Everyone seems to forget that you personally don't have to be attacked to have an impact on you. Any attack would bring the entire city to a halt, like it did Paris. That is a very realistic risk.

2. These attacks are going to become a lot more common. And a lot more violent.

Honestly, go where you want to go and don't be paranoid. Statistics are just that - numbers. Barcelona is no more immune to attack than Paris if ISIS decides is a "pernicious place of pleasure," which it is.

You might be caught unaware in any venue the world over. Don't let it impede your wanderings. If I'd worried about this sort of thing, I'd never have seen half the places in the world I've been to. Stay away from obvious war zones, though.

I'd love to see all of the awful roads in europe that are in worse shape than the US. From everything I have seen - including more than 20 road trips in countries all over europe - the roads there are generally much more well maintained than in the US.

This is unless you are counting the incredibly endless miles of roads out west with no cars on them rather than the countless miles of roads in busy metro areas in the US - in which many major highways resemble swiss cheese.

I do not know where Ambo gets his gang gun death numbers from, but here is a fact:

More Americans have died from guns in the United States since 1968 than on battlefields of all the wars in American history.

I guess Ambo considers school children gang members.

And the reason why there are not more deaths is ironic. American doctors, nurses, and EMTS, have learned to care for gunshot wounds because of knowledge gained from all the wars from Vietnam through Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ambo, there were 1,824 gang-related killings (by all types of weapon) in 2011. In the same year the total number of homicides by firearm were 11,101.

The majority of gun-related deaths in the US is actually due to suicide. Accidental death and death for undetermined reason are also a fair chunk of that 32,000 figure quoted above. But even if all the gang homicides were committed with firearms, it still only be 16% of the total gun homicides.

I think anyone who doesn't understand that Francois Hollande sending an aircraft carrier to the Middle East to attack ISIS won't result in a higher terrorism risk for France doesn't understand much. Although ISIS has plenty of high-value targets on its wish list, its determination to lure France into a retaliatory "who can be made to bleed more" competition will mean higher risks of terrorism within France. People may think that is the right strategy (I don't) but people with choices to make about where they go are not wrong to assess the risks, just as they would about a trip to Turkey, Lebanon or Russia. That doesn't mean the next terror attack couldn't possibly be in Barcelona -- it could be, and not from ISIS -- but France has raised its terror-target profile and it will remain high until other approaches are tried and succeed.

Talk about being paranoid.. Sending an aircraft carrier to get a little closer to the action does not heighten the risk of another terriorist attack, it makes attacking IS targets a little easier. France will always be a target for IS. It's stands for everything IS is against; Liberté, égalité, fraternité.

Spain may be relatively immune from attacks by the jihadis because Spain dropped out of the "war on Terror" after the Atocha train station bombing.

But St. Cirq is correct---if you change travel plans because of general fear of a terrorist attack, then they've won.

We're all going to die some day, and I'd rather die in a bombing than spend my declining years drooling on my chest in a nursing home.

Where would be safer, Italy or Spain?>

chose where you REALLY want to live for a spell - as an architecture student I'd take Italy over Catalonia and Spain - Urbino is a neat smallish city in any case and Barcelona a huge city that besides terrorism has some of the most rampant street crime in Europe, along with Madrid. Muggings are not unusual as they are in most of Europe. Rome has its share of pickpockets and scams too - Urbino would be great - no fears of pickpockets, street scams as in Spain and Rome.

But the overall chance of being victimized - if you know the danger is there from street crime is small and Americans have rarely been involved in terrorists death and injured tolls in recent years - indeed the poor young Long Beach State gal killed is about the only such death I can recall.

Study where you really want to study for architectural reasons IMO and to me that would be Italy hands-down. Urbino if I recall correctly gave its name to urban development and is a treasure-trove of architecture - so is Barcelona and any European city I guess but Italy seems to be tops for what academics study.

Stay away from Barcelona; it is a city for the hopeful, not fraidy cats.> This type of hyperbole and comment is just not useful and IMO is low.

How brave Dukey to call him a fraidy cat - low low low. Put yourself if you can in the shoes of a young student who has never traveled to Europe - yes you have more of a chance of being killed on the way to the airport than in any terrorist attack but still folks who have never traveled abroad and especially their parents may kind of be fraidy cats as you denigrate this natural aspect of human nature that if you could remember when you were young you then may sympathize with a bit more.

Low! Rude! Uncalled for!.

I agree.

I agree with Sandralist.

I think it's naive to derive a cause and effect from NATO actions in the Middle East to terrorist actions in Europe. ISIS along with its forerunner, Al Qaeda, has been bombing targets in Uganda, Kenya, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, none of which has ever dropped a bomb on Syria. They've also been attacking Christian churches, Jewish synagogues, and Shiite mosques all over the world, and any religious minorities that don't adhere to their Salafist or Wahhabi dogma. In the Middle East, they want to de-stabilize every government that exists. They've wreaked havoc in Pakistan. They launched a major attack in Lebanon just a week before the attack in Paris. (The world didn't pause for even a second of silence to remember those victims, nor did any public monuments in the west light up in the colors of the Lebanese flag.) What harm had the Yazidi people done to call upon themselves the mass murder, rape and enslavement they suffered?

If they don't find a big excuse, they'll find a little excuse. They were punishing men in Syria who didn't roll up their trousers at the ankle.

These actions in Syria may be inept or unwise strategically, but they're not the reason behind this terror. This extreme interpretation of Islam has been trying to propagate itself in the world since even before the founding of the Saudi state, which was already a mistake on the part of the British almost 100 years ago.

Hate-mongering, nihilistic creeds with a Big Grievance have always attracted misfits, unhinged dreamers, and people addicted to violence.

This is a very thorny problem, and there are no easy solutions. If all the foreign forces left Syria today, would ISIS start sending diplomatic missions to Europe? You can't reason with people who still call southern Spain al-Andalus and want it back.

As I sometimes say "give the visigoths compensation for their loss"

got to go to Barcelon next month.
I will go.

bvlienci,

Please read this from the New York Review of Books, by Ahmed Rashid. Few people in the world know as much as he does about these issues:

"In October a bombing in Ankara that killed 102 people was blamed on ISIS by the Turkish government. A few weeks later, ISIS’s Sinai affiliate claimed to have brought down a Russian airliner, killing 224 people. On November 12, ISIS claimed responsibility for a double-suicide bombing of a busy shopping street in a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut that left forty-four people dead. There were bombings in Baghdad. And then there was Paris.

"In fact none of these targets is random. What they show is that ISIS is now determined to launch attacks against those states that are waging war against it. Turkey has just given the US government permission to use some of its airbases for strikes against ISIS; Hezbollah is helping Bashar al-Assad fight ISIS. The Russians are now bombing ISIS and other groups, while the French are crucial partners in the anti-ISIS coalition. French warplanes bombing ISIS from runways in the Gulf states are about to get a fresh boost as the French government sends its only aircraft carrier to the Gulf."

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog...mbai-to-paris/

There is another article in the same blog publication describing the psychology of ISIS members, and why it is a mistake to believe what you believe about them. Even more than militarily, ISIS needs to be defeated ideologically, and while they would be happy to have you think the thoughts out do about them, it is important not to feed the narrative they are looking to promote:

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog...trategy-chaos/

I give you these articles because they are short and in one place. But you can find many more in seriously policy journals, trying to get a hearing against the mistaken and uninformed tide of beliefs about ISIS. To be fair, ISIS has caught nearly everyone by surprise. But the window for not paying closer to attention to why it is doing what it is doing has already slammed, and if people want their safety back, they are going to need to think in a new way about this.

" people who still call southern Spain al-Andalus and want it back."

Not just southern Spain. Any land that has once been Muslim is regarded as always Muslim according to certain interpretations of Islam. In any case, someone was saying on NPR last night that what ISIS actually wants is to convert the entire population of the world.

<< "In fact none of these targets is random. What they show is that ISIS is now determined to launch attacks against those states that are waging war against it. >>

And I repeat, what about the Shiite mosques in Iraq that were bombed? The Yazidis? The Copts beheaded in Libya? Were all of them waging war against ISIS?

One has to turn a blind eye to most of their atrocities to make out a narrative of military necessity for their attacks.

<<Even more than militarily, ISIS needs to be defeated ideologically >>

Do any of these bloggers have a serious proposal of how to accomplish this? Who is going to do it? Meanwhile, no one should try to interfere with their ethnic cleansing of the areas they control?

We call these kind of debate 'politique de comptoir' in French. Because these discussions usually take place in a bar ('comptoir' is the bar) with usually half enibrieated people who whne sober onlh have half a brain.
It is boring in a bar, except if you are drunk yourself, so on a forum... that would be the last palce I'd come for political inspiration.

I take it someone thinks IS has a master plan. World conquest? An Arab Hitler. A bunch of fanatics on the loose?

MURDEROUS NEW BUNCH OF FANATICS ON THE LOOSE
December 25, 2004 7:00PM

"Ansar al-Sunnahs first statement surfaced on the Internet, pronouncing itself a group of jihadists, scholars, and political and military experts dedicated to creating an Islamic state in Iraq. The statement was signed by the groups emir, or leader, the previously unknown Abu Abdullah al-Hassan Ibn Mahmoud. "

We are due to go to Barcelona next May.. and Paris, and London and Dublin.. and Greece..

We do not have a death wish, nor are we oblivious to risks.. but at this point I would make no decisions to change any of our plans, and would only do so if developments seriously changed the situation. War maybe?

For the OP I see your dilemma because you have to start payments now,, but for a course that is almost a year away! It would seem to me it the situation changes severely in Europe you would not be held to paying for a course that maybe would not even occur, so I would personally choose the places that would best suit your education plan and not worry too much about the "what ifs" because if its just acts of terrorism.. fact is, you are not safe in any large city in and country, including yours!

With the resources, arms, technology, oraganisation, extremists views, cultural revolution of the West which IS hold and the porous nature of the EU's external/internal borders it's strange that the events of this weekend aren't happening every week.

Strange or suspicious?

Currrent military action against IS is a side show and comical. NATO are running 15 to 20 air operations a day. During the Balkans conflict of 1992, that number was 250 per day, this amount of activity was deemed the tipping point for the operations to be successful. The resources and geographic spread of IS is far greater than the Bosnian Serbs.

MURDEROUS NEW BUNCH OF FANATICS ON THE LOOSE


Problems on The Lounge again?

:-)
LOL

Its getting very nervous in Europe.

Tonight's international friendly between Germany and Holland has be cancelled two hours prior to kick off, in response to a credible intelligence of a potential threat.

International football games are not cancelled without good reason.

Odds are very Remote. I wouldn't worry about it.


I have been to Barcelona and felt safe there, and I am of a different skin colour, if that is relevant.


I would only worry about theft/pick-pocketing, just as I would elsewhere in Europe.


Enjoy your trip, and we will be happy to read from you again.