ABSTRACT
Terrorism has long exercised a great fascination, especially at a safe distance. Terrorism has always engendered violent emotions and greatly divergent opinions and images of it. The popular image of the terrorist was that of a bomb-throwing alien anarchist, disheveled, with a black beard and a satanic smile, fanatic, immoral, sinister and ridiculous at the same time. Terrorism has emerged in many different forms and out of such various motivations as religious protest movements, political revolts and social uprisings. In Spain, there was both agrarian terrorism and industrial terrorism. Seen in historical perspective, the various manifestations of terrorism, however different their aims and the political context, had a common origin: they were connected with the rise of democracy and nationalism. The high tide of terrorism in Western Europe was the anarchist "propaganda of the deed" in the 1890s. In the years after World War I, terrorist operations were mainly sponsored by right-wing and nationalist-separatist groups.
