11

This article deals with the media treatment of Madrid terrorist attack at Atocha’s station in March 2004. The study is based on three newspapers from Madrid and one from the Basque country. This article analyzes the stand taken by the national press on this dramatic event. The fact the terrorist attack occurred in a pre-electoral context, explain that, after a time of doubts about the terrorists’ identity, the newspapers mostly oriented their discourse according to their ideological positions and what they thought about the government. Some parallels may be noted between the different Spanish daily papers which followed and increased the emotion felt by the readership. However, the survey proves that the stake in the election had a strong influence on the treatment of the event in Spain.