"I'm not surprised. I knew it would happen someday," Marcivo De Moma, a member of the ground crew of the Barcelona airport told Xinhua Thursday.
Moma said he was in Madrid during the train bombings in 2004, and this time he was not far from the Barcelona attack either.
"And I just want to tell you, don't be afraid. The attackers are very few people who are crazy. They don't represent Spain and tomorrow will be a normal day," Moma said calmly.
At that moment, the streets around Las Ramblas, where a man drove a white van at high speed into crowd Thursday afternoon, were completely locked down.
People who had been shocked by the tragedy were anxiously waiting for permissions from police to go back to their hotels inside the cordoned off areas. For them, tomorrow is vague and far away.
"I have been waiting here for almost 50 minutes, and the crowd hasn't moved forward at all," a teenage French girl who requested anonymity told Xinhua outside a cordoned off area.
"I was drinking coffee in a shop on the street with my family, and suddenly the car rammed into the crowd. There were screaming and crying everywhere, I was totally shocked," she said.
"We arrived in Barcelona this morning for vacation. It's totally a nightmare. I don't know what we're going to do tomorrow. Maybe we will go back to Paris," said the young girl with sleepy eyes.
Nabil Libouri took his whole family to Barcelona Thursday morning for a one-day visit. When the attack broke out, he was in a cafe nearby with his pregnant wife and two daughters away from the agitated crowds.
"The first thought in my mind is that I must protect my family, so I took them to a shop and hid there till 9 p.m. because we heard that the driver is still at large," said Libouri. "Then we went to our car but found the road blocked. It's midnight now and we can't find any hotel. My family is very tired, but I don't know what to do."
The father of three hopes tomorrow will be a better day.
The second largest terror attack in Spain since 2004 has drawn a flood of condemnation across Europe. But for a continent haunted by social fragmentation, condemnation is only the first step.
