Atocha Station: The Morning of 11 March 2004
Why is it significant?
Take in the great iron-and-glass arch of the old Atocha station, a cathedral of rivets from 1892, with the newer station buildings spreading behind it towards the tracks.
Key Facts
| Place | Atocha Station: The Morning of 11 March 2004 |
|---|---|
| Address | Plaza del Emperador Carlos V, 28045 Madrid, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 40.40630, -3.68980 |
| Part of Walk | Avenue of Shells: Madrid Under Siege and the Road to Democracy |
| Generated | Generated |
Take in the great iron-and-glass arch of the old Atocha station, a cathedral of rivets from 1892, with the newer station buildings spreading behind it towards the tracks.
On the morning of Thursday 11 March 2004, at the height of the rush hour, ten bombs exploded on four commuter trains heading into Madrid: at Atocha, near Calle de Téllez, and at the stations of El Pozo and Santa Eugenia. Nearly two hundred people were killed and around two thousand injured. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in Spain's history, carried out by a jihadist cell, three days before a general election.
Most of the victims were ordinary commuters: students, cleaners, office workers, people from more than a dozen countries who lived in the working-class suburbs along the line. That morning, neighbours near the tracks opened their homes, taxi drivers turned into ambulances, and the queues to give blood stretched down the streets. Candles and handwritten messages covered the station halls for weeks.
The next evening millions of people marched in cities across Spain, and in Madrid they walked in the rain. Memorials followed. In the Retiro park, a small wooded hill called the Bosque del Recuerdo, the Forest of Remembrance, was planted, one tree for each life. Beside this station, in 2007, a tall glass cylinder was raised, its inner skin printed with messages of condolence left by the public; it has since been dismantled.
Thousands of travellers pass through Atocha every hour, most of them without knowing any of this, and perhaps that is how a city goes on living. But many Madrileños still go quiet when they hear the date, eleven of March, simply 11-M. For the last stop, walk uphill along the side of the station to a brick bell tower among the trees, on Calle de Julián Gayarre.