This is the emotional moment a crowd burst into spontaneous applause to show their respect for police officers standing guard in Plaza de Catalonia, Barcelona.
The attacks yesterday evening saw drivers ram their vehicles through throngs of pedestrians – first in Barcelona on the busy Las Ramblas boulevard and later in the nearby seaside town of Cambrils, killing 14 in total and injuring over 100.
The attack in Barcelona took place on Thursday afternoon in broad daylight, with witnesses recounting how a van pushed through the crowd, leaving bodies strewn along the avenue as other people fled for their lives.
Thousands of police officers have flooded the city and the region to ensure the safety of locals and tourists.
In the moving video, a wall of people can be seen giving a resounding chorus of applause to the uniformed officers.
A number of police vans can also be seen lining the avenue.
The video was uploaded to Twitter earlier today and has been shared thousands of times.
The uploader said: ‘Spontaneous applause and recognition [for the police] today in Plaza de Catalonia.’
One commenter wrote online: ‘Thank you for protecting us… you are heroes and never paid enough.’
This is the emotional moment a crowd burst into spontaneous applause to show their respect for police officers standing guard in Plaza de Catalonia, Barcelona
Thousands of police officers have flooded the city and the region to ensure the safety of locals and tourists
Meanwhile, Spanish police have not yet identified the driver of a van that ploughed into crowds in the tourist hotspot in Barcelona and are still searching for him, the regional police commander said on Friday.
Investigators were also trying to pin down links between the Barcelona attackers and a group of five assailants, armed with an axe and knives and wearing fake explosive belts, who were shot dead by police hours later in a seaside resort further down the Mediterranean coast.
The van driver fled after speeding along a pedestrianised section of Las Ramblas, the most famous boulevard in Barcelona, leaving a trail of dead and injured in the latest of a string of attacks across Europe in which militants have used vehicles as weapons.
In the moving video, a wall of people can be seen giving a resounding chorus of applause to the uniformed officers
The video was uploaded to Twitter earlier today and has been shared thousands of times
Police chief Josep Lluis Trapero told a news conference that the driver may or may not be among the five people killed in the resort of Cambrils, 120 km (75 miles) from Barcelona, in the early hours of Friday after they drove their car at pedestrians and police officers.
A Spanish woman was killed in the Cambrils incident, while several other civilians and a police officer were injured.
Police have arrested four people in connection with the attacks, three of them Moroccan and one from Spain’s North African enclave of Melilla, Trapero said. They were aged between 21 and 34, and none had a history of terrorism-related activities.