Atocha

11 March Memorial (click and read the messages)

My face is warm. A painfully bright sun has finally touched my pale skin after a couple of years.

On 11 March 2005 I got up early, caught the metro at Francos Rodríguez Station, got off at Plaza de Santo Domingo and walked down Calle Veneras towards Plaza de San Martín. At 7:38 sharp, the bells in every belfry in town started to toll in unison. I remember San Ginés's bell getting increasingly loud on my way to Calle del Arenal, then gradually fading away and giving in to the Royal Post Office's as I approached Puerta del Sol. The streets, usually bustling at any other time of the day, were empty and quiet and the strokes echoed across the centre of Madrid with a plaintive melody. It felt like a city in mourning and, in a way, it managed to pass its overwhelming sorrow on to you.

Two years later, the much-anticipated 11 March Memorial would be, at long last, inaugurated at 11 am (noon in the end?) on a splendid sunny Sunday morning. At 10.45 I was walking down Paseo de la Infanta Isabel when a policeman blocked my way and enquired where I was going. Clasping the straps of my backpack, I replied enthusiastically I was going to the inauguration of the monument. After having interrupted my sleep and got up earlier than I should on a Sunday, his words really hurt; he said, "I'm sorry, you can't pass until the event is over". Despondent, I turned on my heels, walked up Paseo del Prado, turned left into Plaza de Murillo and got into El Retiro Park. I sat on a bench around the Forest of Remembrance and read the Sunday newspaper with the only disturbance of the footballers behind my back and the occasional football being kicked out of the field, which I kindly threw back over the fence following their requests. The Forest of Remembrance, a grove of 192 cypress and olive trees planted on the first anniversary of the terror bombings --one for each of the fatal victims--, I had visited once before shortly after its inauguration in 2005 and I was pleasantly surprised at how green and well preserved it was after all this time.

Forest of Remembrance (Bosque del Recuerdo)

Roses next to an olive tree

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11 March Memorial covered with a curtain (10/03)

Around twelve I left the park through the Fallen Angel's Gate and walked down Calle de Alfonso XII. My first impression when I saw it was that of disappointment: it didn't look much different from the previous day, when it was covered with a curtain. I heard a woman say disdainfully, What a disappointment! They could have put a beautiful statue! That thing doesn't say anything to me! I went up the grandstand assembled south of the monument for the authorities or the victims' families, which served as a vantage point, and watched the scene. A group of women went on about how ugly it was --it's ugly, ugly, ugly!--. People started to gather around the Spanish flag next to the monument, while wreaths were being leaned against the glass walls of the structure, and chanted slogans generally in favour of the government: El pueblo unido jamás será vencido (A united people will never be defeated), No a la guerra (No to war), Queremos saber quién ha sido (We want to know who did it), Fascistas (Fascists), Zapatero, no estás solo (Zapatero, you are not alone), Los de ayer, ¿dónde están? (Those from yesterday, where are they?), Hemos venido, no nos han traido (We have come, we haven't been brought here - in reference to the people brought to Madrid on chartered buses for the demonstration against the government's anti-terrorist policy organised by the Popular Party)... There were detractors as well, but these were silenced by the majority of left-wingers, more often than not resorting to insults and racist remarks, which I didn't think were civilised or commendable. As I was taking notes of what was going on, an old man next to me asked me whether I was a journalist. I smiled and said, "No, I'm making notes for my blog". He said, "Ah, your blog... a diary", and started giving me his opinion of what was going on: he lashed out against former president Felipe González, the ubiquitous corruption, the unions' leaders (why didn't they take part in the demonstrations against terrorism when most of the victims in the train blasts they say to represent were workers?), the politicians that lived in exile during the Franco regime and then came back to lead our lives (and get rich), most of the time against the ideals they had defended before, and betraying those who had trusted them, ruining their hopes, and the memory of those who fought for those ideals and were killed. He remembered a conversation he had had the day before with a man who hurled insults against Ángel Acebes and José María Aznar. He had invited him to think twice before uttering those atrocities and endorse Antonio Machado's words: ¿Tu verdad? ¿Mi verdad? / ¡No!; ¡la verdad! / ¡Y vamos juntos a buscarla! (Your truth? My truth? / No!; the truth! / And let's look out for it together). As a farewell he jokingly said, "And tell me if ever in your whole life, and I hope you'll live to be eighty, you find someone who wants to be the president of a neighbourhood association!"

Then I joined the queue to the memorial.