Thirteen people from multiple nationalities died on La Rambla that afternoon. A fourteenth victim died ten days later from injuries sustained in the attack. More than 130 people from over 34 nations were wounded, many critically. The driver, 22-year-old Younes Abouyaaqoub, abandoned the van after its airbag deployed from the force of multiple impacts and its electrical system shut down. He fled on foot through the Mercat de la Boqueria -- the covered market that had been serving La Rambla since 1836 -- and escaped into the university district. In his flight, he hijacked a car near the Zona Universitaria metro station, stabbing its driver, Pau Perez, to death. It would take police four days to find him.

The Rambla attack was not the plot the terrorist cell had originally planned. The night before, on August 16, an explosion destroyed a house in the coastal town of Alcanar, 200 kilometers south of Barcelona. Inside were more than 120 gas canisters of butane and propane, along with the explosive TATP. Two members of the cell died in the blast, including Abdelbaki Es Satty, the 44-year-old imam from the Pyrenean town of Ripoll who had radicalized the group. Police believe the cell intended to build massive vehicle bombs -- possibly targeting the Sagrada Familia basilica. When the Alcanar explosion wrecked that plan, the surviving members improvised with the simpler and more brutal tactic of a vehicle-ramming attack.

The violence did not end on La Rambla. Shortly before 1:00 AM on August 18, five members of the cell drove an Audi A3 into pedestrians in the seaside town of Cambrils, 120 kilometers southwest of Barcelona. Wearing fake suicide vests, they attacked bystanders with knives, killing a 63-year-old Spanish woman and injuring six others. A police officer shot and killed four of the attackers; the fifth died of wounds hours later. On August 21, police tracked Younes Abouyaaqoub to a vineyard near the village of Subirats, 31 kilometers west of Barcelona. Wearing a fake explosive vest and shouting, he was shot and killed. In total, eight attackers and sixteen victims died across the connected incidents.

The day after the Rambla attack, tens of thousands gathered at Placa de Catalunya for a minute of silence led by King Felipe VI, Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, and Barcelona mayor Ada Colau. When the silence ended, the crowd broke into applause and a chant that became the city's defining response: "No tinc por" -- Catalan for "I am not afraid." Candles and flowers blanketed the Joan Miro mosaic where the van had stopped, transforming the site of the attack into a memorial. On August 26, a large march down the Passeig de Gracia brought together hundreds of thousands in protest against terrorism. The attacks were the deadliest in Spain since the 2004 Madrid train bombings, and the deadliest in Barcelona since the 1987 Hipercor bombing. In May 2021, a court sentenced surviving cell members Mohamed Houli Chemlal and Driss Oukabir to 53 and 46 years in prison, respectively. La Rambla is crowded again on summer afternoons, the Miro mosaic bright beneath the feet of people who may or may not know what happened there.