yeah. well, there are different parts to that, aren t there? one is americans who are there in barcelona, need to contact their loved ones and let them know they re safe. they need to stay where they are, follow the guidance that is being issued by barcelona police and the barcelona security services that as this others have been saying it, as this incident unfolds, the smart thing to do is stay where you are, stay in your hotel, it keep safe until we know that the incident is over because, for example, there are still reporting still suggesting that the driver of this vehicle has not been apprehended. so there is that aspect. and then there is the other aspect, which is for americans more widely who are thinking to go of going to europe, thinking to travel to barcelona even or parts of spain, what we know from talk ing to european tourist authorities is that an
going in, barcelona today. and rick stengel, msnbc analyst, is joining me now. rick, the state department leaps into action when anything like this happens. talk to me about this area, and what would be happening in the consulate in the embassy, and coordinating with the military and intelligence officials in the region. they would be coordinating as you say with the intelligence officials with military, consulate people would be working overtime and full time and trying to contact americans, trying to talk to american families back here. if i could pull back for a second, andrea, i did work in the kind of counterisis space in terms of messaging and other areas, what this has the hallmarks of, something that mohammad did two years ago before ramadan, where they isis saw they were losing the caliphate in iraq and syria. it was going away. what he said in his broadcast
a decent sense of what a possible motivation might be. of course, we see these sorts of attacks associated with people from across the political spectrum. beginning with isis, as keir mentioned, in places like nice, but, of course, just recently this weekend, the tragedy in charlottesville and we should also remember the attack on the finsbury mosque in london which was anti-muslim attack. so regrettably cars are very deadly weapons and they can be used by almost anyone with a violent ideology. and michael, when we talk about barcelona, unlike other parts of europe, barcelona has not been a significant center of these kinds of attacks in the past, or terror attacks. am i correct? yes, that s right. and all of the spanish, of course, have not been immune to
saw the attack in 2004 by al qaeda which killed almost 190 people and the spanish counterterrorism forces then evolved. they have been very successful in breaking up al qaeda and islamic state operations in that country. particularly, recruiters. barcelona was a hub for people running small shops who were changing money into phone cards and distributing this to so that people who were joining isis could get their equipment and then fly to syria. that being said, even though spanish forces may have had good intelligence about what we call known wolves and lone wolves and unknown wolves, that doesn t mean you can stop an attack like this. it requires someone to have the will and the vehicle and pick a location and do it.
know august in europe is vacation month, it is also a big tourist attraction for americans. but this is the time when people throughout europe take that month and are traveling south, many of them to spain, barcelona, of course, such a cultural magnate, such a tourist attraction. it really is. it has everything, barcelona is by the sea. the mediterranean sea. it is a cultural center. so for many different people it is a very attractive place to go. what i also know from talking to tourist authorities across europe, after an incident like this happens, actually what they found is the tourism bounces back very quickly, the numbers of people who are relaxed and happy and don t feel frightened to go to the big tourist destinations in europe, you know, resurges again. so it is likely that there will have been people from all around the world in these streets when this happened, it is very likely there would have been americans there. we don t know whether any