DLC Blog

11 de marzo, un año después

madrid relives horror of attacks -- bbc news


<< en ese vagón íbamos todos >> ("we were all on that train")


tomorrow will mark the one-year anniversary of the atrocities that happened in madrid, spain on march 11, 2004. 191 people died in atocha station, and dozens more in hospitals all over the city as a result of the terrorist attack.

eerily, my memories resurface and i find myself no less uneasy than i was a year ago. i remember that day: i was in sevilla. there was a light drizzle and somehow the melancholic color of the sky projected something foreboding. once i reached the university, a group of universidad de sevilla students stood outside in a large circle, chanting things i couldn't understand. i proceeded to walk to my class, and in there, my classmates and professor had the television on, and that was where i learned about the tragedy in madrid.

that week, i felt like i was in "the twighlight zone." i was caught up in a trance, just as the spaniards were, and felt like my world had become surreal, devoid of any sense of reality that i felt before that thursday. the common thread that the spaniards and i shared was that we were all suffering in our own way.

the attacks sparked an enigmatic mood in spain. spaniards, the most jovial of europeans, experienced grief for the first time after franco's reign. the controversies brought on by the government also brought on the confusion. everything was chaotic, and no one had anything concrete to hold onto... except to each other.


in a lot of ways, march 11 in madrid affected me moreso than the attacks on new york. i had never been to nyc before september 11, 2001, but before march 11, 2004, i had been inside atocha station. i was in madrid. i believe in what the city stands for: the struggle for unity within a divided nation.

in spain, the dissent among the autonomous regions, such as in cataluña and the basque country, is prevalent, but on march 11, it was evident that the unity of the spaniards was stronger than any divide any terrorist could have caused. if there is a lesson that can be learned from tragedies such as this, it is that our existence is something that should not be taken for granted. we cannot afford to take each other for granted.


paz pa' madrid.

Posted by Charlie at March 10, 2005 01:11 PM in Foreign Language.