Spain commemorates 20th anniversary of 2004 terror attacks

Spain will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the 2004 terrorist attacks on four commuter trains which killed 193 people and injured nearly 2,000 and sparked a bitter political row over who was responsible for the massacre.

To commemorate the massacre and honour the memory of the victims, Spanish King Felipe VI, Queen Letizia, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez (PSOE/S&D), European Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas and Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson will meet this Monday at a ceremony in Madrid’s Royal Palace, Euractiv’s partner EFE reported.

The ceremony will also feature testimonies from victims and survivors of the tragedy.

“Their voices are powerful and necessary in the fight against terrorism and radicalisation”, the European Commission said.

The Madrid attacks were the most serious in Spain’s recent history and the second most deadly on European soil after the Lockerbie bombing in 1988, when a plane belonging to the defunct US airline Pan Am exploded in mid-air and crashed into the Scottish town of Lockerbie, leaving 270 people dead.

While the PP claimed that the massacre was the work of the now defunct Basque terrorist group ETA, the PSOE – and the preliminary findings of the researchers – pointed to terrorist groups linked to Islamic Jihad.

At the time, a large part of public opinion in Spain questioned the need for Spain’s military involvement in the Iraq war. The personal friendship between Aznar and then US President George W. Bush led Madrid to involve troops and equipment in the conflict.

The attacks came at a politically tense time in the country, with Spain holding general elections just three days later, which were won by the then PSOE candidate and former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. One of his campaign promises was the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq, which took place in May 2004.

Two decades after the bloody attacks, the wounds have not yet healed among the relatives and survivors and in Spanish society.

The president of the Victims of Terrorism Foundation (FVT), Juan Francisco Benito, told Euractiv’s partner EFE that “there are only two sides, that of the murdered and that of the democrats”, and that the victims “will never” accept “the legitimisation of any form of terrorism”.

Referring to the victims, Benito recalled that “they are not figures. They are broken lives, clocks stopped forever. They are families shattered, life projects cut short”.

The vice-president of the FVT in La Rioja (northeast), Víctor López, called on the authorities on Saturday to implement “the political, legal and social instruments necessary to eradicate terrorism forever from society”.

The European Union (EU) decided in 2004 that 11 March would be the European Day for the Victims of Terrorism so that no one would forget that tragedy and others committed on European soil.

(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.Euractiv.es)