Last July 30th, soon after terrorist group ETA killed 2 young policemen in Palma de Mallorca (Spain), social networks began to mobilize against the killings.

If in previous attacks this kind of protest was mainly expressed through individual blogs, especially through people posting black ribbons on their pages and commentaries, after this new attack online social networks were full of different tweets, images and status posts.

Hashtags like "#ETA" y "#etaNO" were part of 'trending topics', with a 0.12% rating in tweets trends, more than double the percentage of tweets tagged #Obama on July 31st. Only #iranelections had more mentions. For most of the day, both #ETA and #etaNO were at the right column and homepage at twitter.

Also at twitter, a Twibbon ready to add to the twitter image profile with ETA No was created and added by 343 users.

In facebook´s status and profile images, thousands of people added different images and messages saying “ETA NO”. Apparently, both policemen had a facebook profile (now erased), with a personalized url and168 friends. However, after the attacks new groups were created, one remembering Diego Salva with 10,249 members, one for both policemen with 4,225 members, and 7 groups around ETANO, with between 10 and 1,900 members. Finally, one can also find an English group with 56 members.

The Spanish government used Twitter to ask for citizen collaboration. In its new official Twitter account, one could read the following tweet: "#etaNO Help us with this RT Important warning for citizenship colaboration today at Balearic Islands: http://www.mir.es/DGRIS/Documentos/colciu.html.

Other tweets have been RT (re-tweeted) several times, complaining about some international mass media such as BBC, CNN or The New York Times, and asking them to refer to ETA as a “terrorist group” instead of “separatist group”. " @bbcnews ETA is a TERRORIST group, not separatists". The main messages were: it is not the same to divide as to cover in blood, links to a vídeo, a post and a photo album in flickr to explain the differences.

Some of the most active called for a 5 minute “strike” in Twitter and Facebook, but difficult to know its success.

Social networks have become a very widely used resource for Spaniards to take comfort in moments of crisis, to complain about political events, and to help in the fight against terrorists, in many different places and moments. It remains to be seen whether anything as potent as the “Million Against the FARC” movement that flowered in Columbia will grow here. But even if these manifestations remain relatively small-scale, right now it is telling that the anti-ETA voices online are much stronger than the pro-ETA voices.

Rafa Rubio is Proffesor and Director of the I+Dem group in Complutense University and partner in Dog comunicación