The ten bombs exploded in the space of three minutes on four commuter trains in Madrid, on the morning of Thursday, March 11, 2004. It was rush hour and the carnage was monstrous: 192 dead and 1,857 injured. Twenty years later, La Vanguardia wanted to give voice to those who experienced the tragedy first hand. Three of the interviewees were lucky enough to survive, but in one way or another they have been marked. The other three lost loved ones – a husband, a sister, a mother – and their lives were also broken.
1. Ángel Fernández Pliego
71 years old survivor
“We were pencaires”
Ángel considers himself, despite everything, a lucky man. At the age of 71, he can say that death has visited him several times, but it has always eluded him.
“I started work at thirteen. My job was at heights, welding beams. I got stuck on the beam a bunch of times, about to fall. And it wasn’t like now, we went without a harness. But I never fell”, he explains.
Death almost came to him on April 12, 1985 at the El Descanso restaurant. The first jihadist attack with victims in Spain. “I was there an hour before, to buy ribs. They were very good, the American military wanted to eat them. We escaped miraculously, my wife and I.”
And 11-M. Ángel was in the first carriage of the train that exploded on Carrer Téllez. I was going to work. The bomb, hidden in a backpack, was under his seat. He stood up just before the explosion and that saved him. 26 people died in his wagon alone, he says.
He is one of those who believe there are still questions to be answered. “These 20 years have passed very quickly, I have become old and on top of that I don’t know if one day we will know the whole truth”, he complains. “I feel anger, helplessness. Those of us who were on those trains were going to work, we were pencaires, wafer”.
2. Andrea Ramírez Jaro
23 years He lost his mother
“Because? I don’t think I’ll ever find the answer”
L was three years and one week old when she was left without a mother. He doesn’t know which train he was on. He has “limited information” about that day that marked his life. Looked for dropper data, it’s too painful.
Of her, María Teresa Jaro, who died at the age of 33 while going to work, barely retains two memories etched in her memory. Singing together in a bathtub and singing in a car.
Her father explains that, when she died, the girl did not ask for her mother for a week. “When something like this happens to you and you’re so young, you don’t understand it, but that pain hurts more over time,” says Andrea.
It has been a complicated road. He has received psychological and psychiatric help, with some serious episodes. Now he is better and trusts that the dark days are behind him.
There is a question that has obsessed her since childhood. Because? “In the last year I have felt stronger to investigate what happened. I read articles and watch documentaries to find something that works for me, because the political or religious version is not enough for me. I will surely never be satisfied. Because? Well, because it had to happen and that’s it.”
3. David Abad Quijada
43 years He lost his sister
“The conspiracy will do us a lot of harm”
David, the youngest, was the favorite of his sister Eva, the eldest of four children. On the morning of 11-M, with the family desperate because they couldn’t locate her, it was David who ran to Chamartín and found a sad omen: the lottery administration that Eva was carrying continued with the shutter closed
On Sunday, election day, they went to collect the ashes and then vote. The mother did it with the urn under her arm.
“I set myself the challenge that those who had committed the murder of my sister would pay.” He entered the Association 11-M Affected by Terrorism and threw himself into it. Both in helping other victims and in the political and judicial dimension.
“This country became completely Cainite with the attack. This hurt us a lot”, laments David. During the four months of the trial, not a single session of the oral hearing was missed, nor was the reading of the sentence. The congressional commission of inquiry followed. The association found itself in the eye of the political hurricane, and its president at the time, Pilar Manjón, had serious clashes with the PP. “There were people who insulted us. They have been wild years.”
David is clear: “It is a great inhumanity that they continue with the story that they want to know the truth. Judicial truth is the only one we have, to which we must cling. Although I myself am critical of the sentence. But it cannot be that rumors are spread to sell newspapers. This was mixed with the political question, with the anger at losing power”.
4. María del Mar Pando
53 years old survivor
“Every March 11 I give thanks for being alive”
The bomb shelter didn’t hear him. It was a deafening whistle that suddenly pierced his ears. “I was on the train and when I wanted to notice, I couldn’t hear anything. I didn’t hear the explosion. Just that whistle and being deaf, as if the ears were not mine.”
The expansive wave had moved him into the corridor, and when he sat up he had a hard time knowing where he was. “The only thing you want at that moment is to escape. I saw a broken window and threw myself into it.” She broke her ankle, and was lying on the tracks, unable to stand up.
María del Mar considers herself lucky. Not only did he survive, but he was not seriously injured. “In my family we always say that 11-M is my second birthday, because I was born on March 7 and on that 11th I was born again. I don’t celebrate it, with so many dead, I couldn’t do it, but internally every year I give thanks for being alive”.
5. Olga Rojas Vallejo
39 years survivor
“I felt guilty for being alive”
Olga has a daughter who is about to turn 19, the age she was when two bombs blew up the train that was taking her to high school. “I was very young. I was not prepared for what happened to me.”
He doesn’t have clear memories of everything he saw, but his brain has been sending him disturbing clues. “For years I couldn’t see a roast chicken, especially if the skin was burnt. No ribs. I couldn’t stand it, I started crying, I had to leave”.
“In my case, more than the physical pain, it was the psychological pain,” he says. “For 15 years I have felt guilty for being alive. When someone, thinking they were helping me, told me ‘at least you survived’, I wanted to die.” The fall came when 12 years had passed since the attacks. “One day I woke up and couldn’t go to work”.
He underwent experimental shock therapy. “It was three years. It renewed me.” Among other things, they showed him dozens and dozens of images of roast chickens and barbecues. Now she can explain it by laughing at herself, which is a big step forward.
6. Miracles Courage
52 years She lost her husband
“They couldn’t touch that blood money”
Until the last moment, even when his brother called him from Ifema with the official confirmation, Milagros Valor clung to the hope that it was a mistake.
Vicente Marín died on the spot on the train in Carrer Téllez. He was 37 years old and had been married to Mila for two years. They lived in Entrevías, in a flat they bought with great effort and to which she stayed for two years without returning because everything reminded her of him, of that frustrated life. He also couldn’t think about the money he received as compensation (almost a million euros): “For many years I couldn’t touch the blood money”.
Milagros tours schools and high schools giving talks about 11-M. “There are people who don’t understand you, who tell you to turn the page. Well, I don’t want it to be forgotten.”
