Lots of terrorist news. Now they're saying that there might well have been seven terrorists killed in the Leganes explosion. If you look at the pictures they sure blew the hell out of the place. One of their bodies was catapulted into an empty swimming pool in the inside patio of the apartment building.

They were planning an attentat in or near Madrid for this week, which is Semana Santa, Holy Week, a time when there is a lot of traveling because everybody gets Good Friday off and there's a three-day weekend. A lot of people are taking today, Thursday, off too; the schools are mostly closed. Anyway, the terrorists had 185 kilos of dynamite, which is a hell of a lot when you figure that each of the 13 backpack bombs planted on 3/11 had about 10-12 kilos of dynamite in it. They also had plenty of detonators and everything else they could possibly have needed. That Leganes flat was an all-purpose arsenal.

Anyway, four of the dead guys have been identified, and the other three have not; none of them is among the wanted terrorists, six of them, whose identity has been made public. Specifically, none of them is Mohamed or Rachid Oulad or Said Berraj, the three suspected bomb-planters still at large. Meanwhile, two more arrestees were arraigned and jailed by Judge Juan del Olmo; they are Abdelilah El Fuad and Rachid Adli, both Moroccans. They are thought to be minor accomplices rather than big players.

"The Tunisian", now happily dead, was the organizer on the ground of the 3/11 attacks. His contact with Al Qaeda was Amir Azizi, co-boss of the Spanish Al Qaeda cell broken up in November 2001 (the other co-boss was Abu Dahdah, in jail still awaiting trial); Azizi was the conduit between "The Tunisian" and Zougam and Balkh and company, and Al-Zarqawi, one of Ben Laden's collaborators. Azizi is extremely badly wanted by the Spanish police.

Trivia note: "The Tunisian" received 30,000 euros of Spanish government scholarship money to study for four years, 1994-1998, at the Autonomous University of Madrid. An interesting point is that he was radicalized at this time, after arriving in Spain. He did not come here as a sleeper agent, not originally.

Just to demonstrate that there is some intelligent life in Spain, at least among the 35% who voted for the PP, here's a piece by Florencio Dominguez from today's La Vanguardia. It's called "Causes and Pretexts".

The 3/11 bombings have started a debate about the roots of Islamic terrorism and the most efficient method to combat it. The demonstrated lethality and the indiscriminate selection of the vicitms has caused a degree of fear in society greater than any other form of violence that we have suffered in the past. In addition, the willingness to commit suicide of the perpetrators of these attentats make older methods useful to combat other forms of terrorism obsolete.

The vision the progressives love is the appeal to the need to understand the causes that provoke terrorism to appear. They make use of explanations that make reference to the interventions in Iraq or Afghanistan, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or the aftereffects of colonialism. Frequently the image of terrorists that come from the pockets of poverty or the oppression of the Muslim countries, who act motivated by the righteous need to settle old scores, is broadcast.

One of the founders of ETA, Julen Madariaga, "Ahmed" while he was an exile in Algeria, expressed yesterday a vision of this sort: "On an international scale, I understand, on the one hand, the reaction of these peoples, who are defending themselves the way they can." Madariaga stated that the Westerners had committed "cruelty and barbarity" in Iraq and that "they cannot defend themselves as they should be able to" against the military power of the "American giant", so they "answer back as they can."

"They send their commandos and do things like we have seen in Madrid or the Twin Towers of New York. Those attentats were a reply to all that," he added, forgetting that the Twin Towers were attacked long before the intervention in Iraq.

The vision of Islamic terrorism as a response to offenses and injustice conflicts frequently with the facts reality shows. It is difficult to make this posture cohere with the fact that the leader of Al Qaeda is a multimillionaire who has put his burgeoning resources to the service of his cause, or that the most radical and rigorous interpretation of Islam, that which feeds the majority of the terrorists, comes from the opulent Saudi Arabia and spreads through the world financed by the petrodollars that have enriched the bosses of that country.

Reality also frequently dismantles the image of the Islamic terrorist as a hopeless pariah. Just look at the list of suspects from 3/11: the boss of the group, the sadly notorious Tunisian, had been at the university, like another of those the police are looking for; one of those in jail has a degree in chemistry; another is the owner of a phone shop; "El Chino" and his family had a clothing wholesale business, as did other suspects now in jail. This profile does not correspond to that of unfortunate individuals, just the opposite of the many thousands of immigrants, whether Muslims or not, who have to make their own way every day working at the hardest and worst-paid jobs without for one moment thinking of violence.

If we're looking for the causes, we should look at what causes the fanaticism which moves all terrorists and, in particular, the Islamist ones. Probably sectarian indoctrination is a lot more important than the intervention in Iraq. When we look for the roots of this situation, we should pay attention to Professor Fernando Reinares, an expert in the study of violence: "It's important not to confuse causes with pretexts." For now we know a lot about the pretexts but very little about the causes.

I boldfaced the two bits I thought were particularly good.