Madrid bombings survivors’ pain, fear linger 20 years on

Twenty years after Angeles Pedraza lost her daughter during the carnage of the Madrid train bombings that killed nearly 200 people, she still doesn’t understand why.

“Although it’s painful and sad every day when a date like this comes around, it’s much worse. Because after 20 years, I still wonder why, what have these murderers achieved?” Pedraza, 65, told AFP at her home in Valdemoro.

Her memory isn’t what it used to be, but she still remembers “every single minute” of March 11, 2004, when 10 bombs exploded on four commuter trains shortly after 7:30 am, killing 192 people and wounding nearly 2,000.

Her 25-year-old daughter Miryam, she said, would normally take the train to work with her younger brother Javier and as far as the family was concerned, the day started just like any other.

Pedraza was driving to work when she heard initial reports on the radio but didn’t worry about her kids as the explosion seemed to be at Atocha station in the city centre.

But by the time she got to work, there had been more explosions and everyone was in a panic trying to track down their loved ones. She quickly reached her son who – by a miracle – had overslept, and was safe.

But she could not get hold of Miryam despite trying everything to find her.

“We drove miles to all the hospitals and emergency rooms because every hour, they would release an updated list of those who’d been admitted,” she said.

“All we wanted was to hear her name, but we never did.”

Eventually, they went to an information centre for families where they waited. At 3:00 am, they were told she was among the dead.

– ‘I’ll never forgive them’ –
“On that day, you die yourself. Because aside from the immense pain, you cannot understand why,” she said, 20 years of grief etched on her face.

She has since spent years very publicly campaigning for justice as head of the AVT Terror Victims Association. But her son has never once spoken of that day when his sister was killed and he was spared.

“I try not to be bitter and I don’t live with a sense of hatred, but I’ll never forgive those who did this to my daughter.”

As Pedraza was frantically contacting the hospitals, Francisco Alameda Sanchez, who was on the same train but escaped largely unharmed, was down on the tracks trying to help the wounded.

In the first carriage where one of the bombs went off, Sanchez, who was 40 at the time, found himself lying on his back with the train’s doors and windows blown out.

“I wasn’t physically hurt except I had a lot of pain in my ears, so I stayed to help people who were worse off than me,” he told AFP. He likely survived because he was sitting at the furthest point from the blast, he said.

He stayed for three more hours, during which time he witnessed horrors that never left his mind: the screaming, burnt bodies, people without legs.

With no way of carrying the injured, several of them used the train doors as stretchers, which were so heavy it took six people to carry them.

“The smell of burning, of burnt flesh, has stayed with me. And the deathly silence,” he told AFP at Atocha station.

– ‘The fear has stayed with me’ –
His ears recovered and he went back to work, refusing therapy, thinking he “was strong and could deal with it on my own”.

But 10 years later, he was struggling so he joined the March 11 Terror Victims Association and found a therapist who transformed his life. Since 2016, he has served as secretary of the group, which has 1,900 members.

Even so, he has not shaken off the fear.

“The fear has stayed with me, every time I come here my head starts spinning,” he said, glancing around the huge station which lies close to Madrid’s Prado Museum and Retiro Park.

Rut Jezabel Garcia was 24 when the train she was on exploded, sustaining a shoulder injury that needed surgery, and long-term hearing problems as well as years of psychological issues.

“Although I was on the train that suffered the least damage, it was just horrible,” said Garcia, who works in accounting and has a 10-year-old daughter.

“There are images of injured people you can’t get out of your head, even though it’s been 20 years… It was just unreal, like something from a film.”

Since then, she’s never taken the same train and avoids crowds “because I’m afraid the same thing could happen again.”

She still has shoulder pain, and hearing problems and suffers from persistent insomnia.

Despite everything, she’s grateful to be alive, although the anniversary will always be difficult.

“For me, the month of March is horrible, no matter how many years pass,” she said, fighting back the tears.

“It’s always bad. If I could, I’d erase it from the calendar.”

Last Spain attack
Meanwhile, in 2017, in another event in Barcelona’s most popular street, there was vehicle ramming, which the police said was a “terror attack”.

“We can confirm there are 13 dead and more than 50 injured,” regional interior minister Joaquim Forn said in a tweet.