THERE'S A WAR ON, MATE

Admiration mingled with astonishment over calm response (Giles Tremlett, The Guardian, July 12th, 2005)

Spaniards who lived through a similar attack in Madrid last year view London's phlegmatic return to normality with a mixture of admiration, incomprehension and outrage.

While the Madrid train bombings brought millions of mourners on to the streets of Spanish cities and provoked angry demonstrations, political rows and a change of government, Spaniards have found Londoners' stiff upper lip almost unintelligible.

Nowhere was this more so than in Madrid, where comparisons were made between Thursday's attacks and the train bombings that killed 191 people in March last year.

"The British have been exemplary on their day of pain and chaos, but in Madrid people reacted as well, or better," Pilar Cernuda, an ABC news paper columnist, claimed.

Spanish journalists in London have looked in vain for the communal mourning, group solidarity or mass indignation that filled Madrid's streets in the days after the attacks.

"The feeling that people had reacted in an orderly manner was a point of pride in people's conversations in a country where the word 'emotional' is used to indicate a personality defect," El Correo's London correspondent told readers.

"In continental Europe, and especially in the south, cathartic ceremonies are needed to stave off panic: demonstrations, shows of unity and collective hugs of consolation," said Enric González in El País. "London buries its dead as it has always done: simulating relative indifference and displaying normality."

Most of all, however, there has been admiration. "In the midst of commotion and anguish for the cruel blow received, the response has been of civic maturity and democratic responsibility," said El Mundo's editor, Pedro Ramírez.

"This particular British style of understanding collective life, full of common sense and pragmatism, is why Britain has known neither fascism nor communism," columnist Javier Otaola wrote in El Correo.