The perpetrators said the attack was revenge for Spain’s role in the US-led invasion of Iraq.
A decade later, jihadists invoked the West’s intervention against the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq and Syria to unleash a new wave of terror in Europe.
AFP looks back at the deadliest attacks over the past two decades:
Four suicide bombers blew themselves up in coordinated hits on the London underground and a bus on July 7, 2005/ ADRIAN DENNIS
A year after Spain, London’s transport system is targeted on July 7 when four suicide bombers blow themselves up in coordinated strikes on the underground network and a bus.
Claimed by Al-Qaeda, the attacks kill 52 people and injure another 700.
A decade later in France, a new wave of jihadist attacks begins, most of which are claimed by IS.
The deadliest takes place in Paris on November 13 when IS gunmen go on a shooting and bombing rampage, killing 130 people at the Bataclan concert hall, in bars and restaurants, and at the Stade de France stadium in France’s worst post-war attacks.
On March 22, IS suicide bombers kill 35 people and injure another 340 at Brussels airport and the Maelbeek metro station, near the European Union headquarters.
Belgian investigators say the assailants were part of the same Brussels-based cell that orchestrated the Paris attacks.
France is again targeted on July 14, Bastille Day, when a radicalised Tunisian drives a truck through crowds after a fireworks display in the southern resort of Nice, killing 86 people and injuring more than 400.
The attacker is shot dead by police with IS claiming responsibility for the attack. French investigators don’t find any links between the assailant and IS.
A deadly bombing at a Manchester pop concert in 2017 killed 22 people /OLI SCARFF
Back in Britain, a young Briton of Libyan origin blows himself up at an Ariana Grande pop concert in the city of Manchester on May 22.
The attack kills 22 people including seven children and leaves around 100 injured.
The bombing was claimed by IS, with the 22-year-old assailant using a homemade shrapnel bomb. His family had fought in Libya’s civil wars.
Sixteen people died in 2007 in two successive attacks in Barcelona and the seaside town of Cambrils/ JAVIER SORIANO
On August 17, a group of young radicalised Moroccans and Spaniards of Moroccan origin plough a van into pedestrians in Barcelona’s famous Ramblas boulevard.
