“A van crashed into pedestrians thronging a popular tourist area in the center of Barcelona, Spain, on Thursday,” read the opening sentence of a New York Times report yesterday, “killing at least 13 people in what the police were calling a terrorist attack.”

While local and national police and intelligence officers are still gathering information about the men suspected of plowing a vehicle into a crowd of tourists (as of this writing, two men have been arrested), and we have no idea of knowing whether this was an act of deadly, individual malice or part of a wider campaign planned and directed by the Islamic State, we do know that the violence in Barcelona is an extension of previous terrorist strikes in Europe over the last two years.

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