Barcelona

The global risk-off mood accelerated overnight on Trump "stability concerns", coupled with fallout from the Spain terrorist attack and lingering North Korea tensions, even if the VIX is off its latest highs, trading just above 15. Investors fled into German and U.S. Treasury bonds and bought gold for the third day in a row, as the appeal of such top-notch assets grew further due to a deadly attack that killed at least 13 people in Barcelona.

Spanish police have shot and killed four people while carrying out an operation in response to what was reportedly another terrorist attack in a town south of Barcelon .

The regional police for the Catalonia region said on Twitter early on Friday that officers are in Cambrils, a seaside resort town about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Barcelona, where they are dealing with a "possible terror attack."

Barcelona football club’s little Argentinian player Lionel Messi packs a cannon for a left leg. A Messi shot at the Villarreal goal on Sunday went beyond the goal post and broke a spectator’s wrist, resulting in a 2-2 draw. Russia Today reports: The current Ballon d’Or holder fired a shot at goal in the 15th minute of the La Liga clash, but it flew over the bar and struck a member of the El Madrigal crowd.

Spanish politics is a mess.

Everyone knew, going into last fall and winter, that the waters were about to get decidedly choppy. At the national level, Podemos was ascendant as Pablo Iglesias rode a wave of anti-austerity sentiment straight to the front of disaffected voters’ collective consciousness.

A nation beset by sky high unemployment had grown tired of the PP and PSOE duopoly that had dominated Spanish politics since at least the late 80s. Between Podemos and Ciudadanos, a shakeup was virtually assured.

In a deepening of one of Spain’s biggest paedophile scandals, a third teacher at a Barcelona school run by a Roman Catholic order has confessed to sexually abusing students. The abuse took place at a Marist school in Les Corts, a Barcelona neighbourhood where a total of three teachers have admitted sexually abusing children. Local.es reports: The man, who is in his 70s and was identified only by his initials A.F., can be heard in the video recorded with a hidden camera apologising to one of the victims he abused in the 1980s.