Yes sure you had IRA, ETA in Spain. Although they were making regular appearance in the media, that was not a daily drivel.
Suddenly 9/11 and everything any government in the world does not sanctify is labelled terrorism, and adequate action as demonstrated by the US is required. Break a window during protest: terrorism, complain loudly about stuff: suspected terrorist.
You cannot deny that since 9/11 lot of freedom have been given up in the name of fighting terrorism ? How is it that Spain/UK with active terrorist movement did not have those laws before ? How is it that we are dead scarred of this "muslim terrorist leaving in a cave in Afganistan/Syria/Irak/ next target", but we were fine living next-door to our homemade ones ?
Long before 9/11, I travelled with bottle of wine from spain to the uk and bottle of whisky to spain from the uk. Both when the IRA and ETA were active.
Nowadays, it is not possible in case some terr'ist muslim (sorry no racism, but that's the current media scapegoat) want to "blow our freedom away".
How is it that Spain/UK with active terrorist movement did not have those laws before ?
They (the UK) did. They had the Prevention of Terrorism Acts in the 1980s. They had interment without trial. They had aggressive police on the streets. They had police shooting at protesters. They had the head of government (Thatcher) saying "We don't negotiate with terrorists". They had secret service spying on people of the wrong ethnicity.
I remember going to Northern Ireland in the 90s and being questioned by military with machine guns at the border. These things did exist.
Omagh is NI; but the important point here was the militarized police force was (for better or for worse, given the number of mainland attacks) confined to NI. Much of the special powers granted only applied to NI. I'm not saying it wasn't a problem on the mainland — by any measure, it was — but one must realize the extra powers granted were limited.
Actually as a resident of the UK, it was a "meh" thing. The word terrorist was still an extreme word used in rare circumstances even back in the height of the bombings.
And no one really actually cared about it that much.
Now it's a label for every crime. "The defendant is a terrorist unit proven otherwise".
I loved to London in 2000. I just realised today that there were at least 5 bombings and one rocket propelled grenade fired at Mi6 headquarters in the two first years I lived here - I only remember two (the car bomb outside BBC offices and the Ealing bomb where they'd phoned in a misleading warning naming a street that doesn't exist).
The rest apparently got so little media attention that I either didn't notice them or have forgotten all about it.
Of course that was well past the peak of the bombings, but it seems like a good illustration of how much of a "meh" thing it actually was.
To be fair, though, 9/11 was on a whole different order of magnitude to what the IRA attempted, and the IRA were never suicide bombers which made them easier to deter.
As pointed out below, there was much less fuss about it, even after the Brighton hotel bombing, and much less restriction of civil liberties in mainland UK. (Civil liberties restrictions and human righs violations in Northern Ireland, on the other hand ...)
Back To The Future is my favorite example of the pre-90s perception of terrorists - gullible, ambitious beyond their means, a comical mix of bloodthirsty and inept, and only really dangerous if you stand still right in front of one with your hands in the air.
I think public perception started to shift well before 9/11, with 1995 being a critical turning point with the one-two punch of Oklahoma City and the capture of the Unabomber.
Are you shitting me? Do you perhaps not realise the UK was bombed by the IRA for many many years? That 5 letter bombs were sent only the other week?
Oh right, Americans didn't talk about terrorism, therefore it didn't exist.
Gotcha.