Stocks of major travel companies fell sharply in a global sell-off after a series of terrorist attacks in tourist hotspot Barcelona and nearby towns, leaving 14 people dead and over a hundred wounded, Reuters reported.
All European sectors were in the red on Friday.
The pan-European STOXX 600 (TIKER: SXEP.INDEX) dropped down 0.9%, with blue-chips STOXX50E also down 1%.
Travel and leisure stocks SXTP pushed down 1.4%.
But the worst-performing were airlines. IAG (TIKER: IAG.LSE) which owns British Airways, Lufthansa, Easyjet (TIKER: EZJ.LSE), Ryanair (TIKER: RYA.LSE) were down from 1.9% to 2.7%.
AENA (TIKER: AENA.BM), Spanish airport company, went down 2%. Spanish stocks IBEX (TIKER: IBEX.INDEX) underperformed its benchmark competitors, decreasing 1.4%.
"As we've seen over the last couple of years in Europe, these kinds of atrocities affect tourism and will hit airline earnings," analyst at ETX Capital Neil Wilson said.
Needless to say that the recent deadly attack in Spain did not spur optimism to global markets which had already been in the negative territory earlier that day.
U.S. stocks opened significantly lower on Thursday, loosing still more in late-morning trade with 10 of the 11 primary S&P 500 sectors in the red.
The S&P 500 SPX (TIKER: SPX.INDEX) -0.41% fell 12 points or 0.5% at 2,456; the Dow Jones Industrial Average, -0.34% fell 100 points or 0.5% to 21,925; the Nasdaq Composite Index -0.64% dropped 46 points or 0.7% to 6,297.