Barcelona attack: From age 3 to 80, victims represent a wide world

People from around the world killed in vehicle attacks in Barcelona and the nearby seaside resort of Cambrils on Thursday and early Friday.

As many as 14 people lost their lives in Barcelona attack and among them there was an Italian father who saved his children’s lives but lost his own, an American celebrating his first wedding anniversary and a Portuguese woman celebrating her birthday with her granddaughter.

They spanned generations — from age 3 to age 80 — and leave behind devastated loved ones. The victims — who also include over 120 people wounded in the attacks — come from nearly three dozen countries.

Here is a look at some of them:

Francisco Lopez Rodriguez, 57, and Javier Martinez, 3, Spain

Francisco Lopez Rodriguez was killed with his 3-year-old grand-nephew, Javier Martinez, while walking along the Las Ramblas promenade in Barcelona.

Lopez was accompanied by his wife Roser — who is recovering from her wounds in a hospital — her niece and the niece’s two children, one of them Javier.

“He was a lovely man, kind and charitable. Everyone loved him,” said 81-year-old Natalia Moreno Perez from Lopez’s native town of Lanteira, some 700 inhabitants outside Granada in southern Spain.

“I knew him from when he was a kid, always telling jokes,” said Natalia. “Terrible news, the town is in mourning.”

Lopez emigrated from the town with his family in the 1960s to seek work. He lived in Rubi, a migrant town of 75,000 people northwest of Barcelona, and had been visiting the Catalan capital.

Leading newspaper El Pais said Lopez worked as a metal worker in Rubi and had been walking back from Barcelona port area when the van burst onto Las Ramblas.

“We are a broken family,” niece Raquel Baron Lopez posted on Twitter.

Granddaughter and grandmother, 20 and 74, Portugal

The two were in Barcelona to celebrate the grandmother’s birthday when they were caught up in the horror on Las Ramblas, according to Portuguese media reports.

They had arrived in the city for a week’s vacation just a few hours before they were killed, Jose Luis Carneiro, Lisbon’s secretary of state for Portuguese communities abroad, told reporters.

The older woman was reported dead Friday, while the younger woman was initially reported as missing before finally being identified Saturday.

Those hours left her parents in a painful limbo, Carneiro said.

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