Italian anarchist Michele Angiolillo assassinated Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo on 8 August 1897, in Gipuzkoa.

Alejandro Lerroux, editor of the republican Madrid newspaper El País [es] published a months-long series on the stories of those tortured and undertook a propaganda tour of La Mancha and Andalusia.

While in Paris, Angiolillo also met with Henri Rochefort, editor of the anarchist newspaper L'Intransigeant, which had been one of the most prominent publications in the international campaign to denounce Montjuïc's torture.

[5] European and American press coverage speculated on whether the attack against the prime minister of the Spanish government was part of a vast international anarchist conspiracy.

The Times affirmed that the crime had been the work of a fanatic and stressed that there was no evidence of an international organization behind it, but requested that the police be both alert and not undertake exceptional measures.

Its shadow, as the historian Juan Avilés Farré has pointed out, "continued to cloud the image of the Spanish Government even in the mournful days of the death of Cánovas".

One of the possible explanations for the persistence of anarchist terrorism in Spain, according to historian Avilés Farré, was the mishandling of the Spanish authorities' response: simultaneously "barbaric, illegal and ineffective" in substituting repressive cruelty for effective police and legal work.

For example, Barcelona lacked a sufficiently large and capable police force to face the challenge posed by the 1890s attacks and instead turned to massive raids and a torture program, both in the absence of evidence.