A rented van ran over pedestrians in Las Ramblas boulevard (usually chock-full of tourists), in the very center of Barcelona. Two dead, “many” injured, according to local sources. Van hit a kiosk and stopped; driver and accomplice ran away on foot (also according to local sources). Pparently they were armed and some sources say they went into a restaurant to hide/fortify themselves inside it, but this is not confirmed. There is some confusion regarding this point.
Lots of armed police reacted very swiftly.
There are reports that the perpetrators had rented two vans; it seems the second van was supposed to be their getaway vehicle.
Developments still coming through; not yet clear what the situation exactly is?
I have friends in Barcelona who were not far from the site; I will give updates here when they tell me more. EDIT: First update – According to Catalan TV, there are 13 dead… >.<
The mossos (regional police) confirm at 19:00 local time (10 minutes ago) that it was indeed a terror attack.
They’re looking for someone in Raval, the part of town that’s (God how to put this in terms foreigners will understand) to the bad side of Las Ramblas. It’s a poorish area with lots of immigrants from non-Spanish speaking countries.
12 victims but that doesn’t mean dead, it means “dead or injured”. I’d got 1 dead from people actually in Raval.
ETA: right now, mossos confirm 1 dead; 32 injured.
Re-ETA: Pepe, the Mensa ZGZ group is churning about it, want me to add you? But anyway I’m just reading the mossos Twitter directly.
People in the area (both locals and tourists) are taking shelter in shops and restaurants; police has cordoned off the whole area, and is letting people out “with eye dropper”.
One terrorist (the guy who rented the two vans) was arrested, apparently; another is still holed up somewhere in Raval; police is negotiating to get him to give him myself up. Things are still very fluid and information is still vague and not 100% reliable.
They had rented two vans; one was used for the attack, and the other was parked in the town of Vic, about 1 hour away from Barcelona. Apparently they had it ready in order to make their getaway.
Sounds like they had never in their life driven around Barcelona then. Because while it’s quite orderly as big cities go, “about 1h away” assumes that the traffic will actually be moving. At the time of the attacks the money is on “it won’t”.
Breaking news - the whole city is under lock-up. It seems that three police agents in a control point in the Diagonal avenue (one of the main exit points of the city) were run over by a vehicle who refused to stop. Still waiting for confirmation.
Several metro stations have been closed down; police have asked people to stay off the streets as much as possible, specially downtown and left of Ramblas.
Assuming y’all aren’t conversant in Barcelona geography:
the Ramblas is actually one rambla, or what in American English is called an arroyo. A rambla is a riverbed which only carries water when it rains; with the autumn rains they can carry quite a lot (there are locations where the floods carry away a few cars every year in September, apparently people have bad memories). The street built atop this particular arroyo changes name through its length: between Plaça Catalunya (the heart of downtown Barcelona) and the sea it’s generically called “las ramblas” and uphill of the square it’s called Rambla Catalunya.
This street acts as the geographical divider of modern Barcelona into “left” (the part SW of this street) and “right”. Raval is to the left of the lower ramblas.
The National Police is asking people to refrain from publishing pictures of the wounded people. Because they’re required to do so, they’re being polite about it rather than saying “why don’t you guys stick those cellphones where things come out?” Meanwhile, several of the national television channels are cycling through the worst videos they can find.
At this time, neither Mossos nor Nacionales have anything about Diagonal. The local police have less information than either one, which makes sense because this is the kind of “bring the big boys” situation where they’re basically treated as assistants to either of the other two.
The cops have been asking people to run well-checks using social networks rather than phone lines. Facebook has activated something called “safetycheck” to help people check on each other.
And given the messages the Nacionales had been posting about the Blood Banks having enough reserves but taking donations anyway, and the big message of “Blood Banks are OK for reserves thank you” the Mossos have just posted, it looks like there has been a wave of people going to donate. I sure prefer those to waves of people deciding that their neighbor who talks funny is now an acceptable target.
“Arroyo” is Spanish, and the term is only used in the West in the US, and even then most people don’t know what it means-- you’re most likely to see it an a street name, like “Arroyo Grande” or something. You might use the term “wash” if you wanted an English word, but even then, I think many people would not what that was.
This new terror tactic is just horrible. So easy to do, and so easy to injure or kill people.
Jesús. Just posted by the Councilor of Justice and retweeted by Mossos: 13 dead, over 50 wounded.
John Mace, arroyo in Spanish and in English mean different things; English got the term from Spanish but changed its meaning. I explained the meaning precisely because I know the English term is used only in some areas. And if there is a day when you could have taken that pedantry and stuck it where the sun don’t shine it’s today.
IIRC, that count makes it the third most-deadly attack in Spain since the end of the 1936-9 Civil War. First is 11-M, then ETA’s Hipercor murders (also in Barcelona), then this.
Confirmed also that the amount of people wanting to donate blood has been so high that there is an official request to not go to donate until tomorrow. The blood banks couldn’t absorb the amount of intended donations.
