Garrote

[2] A garrote can be made of different materials, including ropes, cloth, cable ties, fishing lines, nylon, guitar strings, telephone cord or piano wire.

[2][6] Since World War II, the garrote has been regularly employed as a weapon by soldiers as a silent means of killing sentries and other enemy personnel.

[3][4] Soldiers of the French Foreign Legion have used a particular type of double-loop garrote (referred to as la loupe), where a double coil of rope or cord is dropped around a victim's neck and then pulled taut.

It was intended as a more merciful form of execution than death by burning, where heretics who converted to Christianity after their conviction would receive a quick strangulation from the Spanish Inquisition.

[9] During the Peninsular War of 1808–1814, French forces regularly used the garrote to execute Spanish guerrilleros, priests, and other opponents of Napoleonic rule.

After the death penalty was abolished in Spain, the writer Camilo José Cela obtained a garrote (which had probably been used for the execution of Puig Antich) from the Consejo General del Poder Judicial to display at his foundation.

The device was kept in storage in Barcelona, and was displayed in the room[10][11] that the Cela Foundation devoted to his novel La familia de Pascual Duarte until Puig Antich's family asked for its removal.