Five years ago, a police officer alone neutralized 4 terrorists responsible for the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils. The story of an evening that will go down in the history of Catalonia.
On August 18, 2017, it was a tense Catalonia that woke up with nightmarish images in their heads. That of a van that mowed down 14 people on the Ramblas, a tourist hotspot in Barcelona, the day before.
Since then, the entire police force in Catalonia had launched a massive manhunt, not knowing how many terrorists they were chasing or where the next likely attack was taking place.
Then, in the middle of the tourist season, all the police secured the places where the crowds were received, fearing another attack.
That evening, far from the Barcelona trauma, the sea was cheerfully festive in Cambrils. It was hot, the bars were packed, the music and the sounds of traffic permeated the seafront.
Nearby, a patrol from Mossos d’Esquadra, the Catalan police, was providing a checkpoint when the unthinkable was about to happen. It was 1 a.m. on the night of August 18-19.
“He’s running at me with an axe”
As in Barcelona, a car smashed through the roadblock and clearly aimed at the police who were standing near their vehicle. One of the policewomen is knocked down, another policeman just had time to throw himself on the ground. He will be the hero of Cambrils.
As he got up, he saw men getting out of the vehicle, which had landed on its roof. “They had vests taped to their bodies and they undoubtedly looked like explosive belts,” he testified on November 23, 2020, during the trial of the terrorist accomplices. “I see one of them running at me with an ax and shouting ‘Allahu akbar’ (Allah is great). I braced myself and when I got him a few feet away, I fired. I don’t know, I didn’t even know how many bullets I had. As she fell, three other people ran towards me with the intention of attacking me. I took my gun. They were also armed. I waited until they were near me and shot them down.”
With his service weapon, this police officer has just neutralized four of the five terrorists who have come to sow terror in Cambrils, a seaside resort between Barcelona and Tarragona.
A life of fear of another attack
During the trial, the officer admitted to living in fear and suffering from post-traumatic stress. “I am very afraid that they will recognize me and attack me again,” he then said in a broken voice before the court that tried the suspected accomplices of the terrorists in the Barcelona and Cambrils attacks.
On the evening of August 18, 2017, the fifth terrorist from Cambrils stabbed six people, one of whom died. He was the 16th victim of the Barcelona and Cambrils attacks. A patrol coming from Salou neutralized this 5th terrorist. If the Catalan police shot the terrorist several times, he died in custody.
The hunt for the Barcelona and Cambrils attacks ended on August 21, 2017 in Subirats, 50km from Barcelona, when the driver of the Ramblas van, Younes Abouyaaqoub, was shot dead.
Her accomplices were tried in 2020 and sentenced to between 8 and 53 years in prison. The one who lent the attackers a vehicle and papers was released in September 2021, while the other two remain in prison for at least 20 years.