As a ‘tidal wave of people ran in unbridled fear’

what looked like someone on the ground and they were calling for assistance.

“Within a couple of minutes police started to arrive and they were running west of the restaurant and some were telling us to stay inside.

“Soon after, loads of cars, bikes and ambulances arrived and then the armed police.”

He said he was in the restaurant with around 40 people, adding: “We’re not sure what’s happening.”

Tourist Mel Higgins told Sky News she was barricaded into a shop with her daughters at the time.

She said: “I was with my two daughters and we were walking down the Passeig de Gracia, which is sort of parallel and one up from Las Ramblas, when suddenly people just started running towards us, screaming and shouting: ‘Run! Run! Run!’

“So I grabbed the two girls and there was an Orange phone shop open and we ran inside and they locked the doors of the phone shop, and we just all waited there for, I suppose, about 20 minutes.

“And then it seemed very calm out on the street. And obviously the people working in Orange were in touch with the police and the police said ‘just stay there for now’.

“Then about 20 minutes later they said we could leave, and we were just about to leave when people started running again, and screaming, and they said: ‘Everyone back in!’”

Susan Maclean, who is on holiday in Barcelona with her husband, told Channel 4 News: “All of a sudden, there was this screaming and hordes of people, like a tidal wave of people, fear etched in their faces, running towards us, many of them yelling in Spanish.

“It was just unbridled fear.”