This month marks another anniversary in Spain of an event that changed the country and its people. It’s not a holiday or a national day of celebration, but rather one of Spain’s darkest hours. It has been three years since 11-M, the term Spaniards use when referring to the March 11 terrorist attacks that killed 191 and wounded more than 1,800 people from Europe and Latin America. For those who were touched by the disaster, the tragedy lives on.
Clara Escribano waited at the Santa Eugenia Station for train number 21713 to take her to the hospital where she worked as a nurse. Like her, thousands of working-class commuters jumped on jampacked city trains at 7:38 in the morning, ready to start another day in Madrid. Despite the constant fear of terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington and the start of the Iraq War, no one saw it coming.
In a span of two minutes, 10 bombs exploded in four different train stations, causing havoc and spinning off a political tornado that would lead to the defeat of then head of government Jose Maria Aznar. Aznar not only supported the Iraq War and sent troops in defiance of the will of the people, but tried to cover up information that linked al-Qaida to the attacks.
Two days after the bombings, a video was found in which al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the assault and said the attacks were in retaliation for Spain’s decision to send troops to Afghanistan and for its support of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. The following day, Spaniards voted Aznar out of office and elected the Socialist Party, led by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who fulfilled his promise to bring home the troops.
Yet it is neither politics nor a new anniversary of the tragedy that has awakened the pain of that dreadful day, but rather the trial of 29 men suspected of conspiring in the attacks. On Feb. 15, victims and those who lost their loved ones got their first glimpse of those accused of the deadly bombings, most of them seated in bulletproof chambers during the proceedings.
Conchi Decos was one of those who sat in the courtroom on the first day of the trial. Her heart dropped, she claimed, as she watched the suspects from across the room in the Audiencia Nacional, Spain’s highest criminal court. Deco’s husband was a passenger on one of the trains, and so was Pilar Manjon’s 20-year-old son. Both lost their lives. The two women witnessed the entrance of the defendants, who averted their glances and turned their backs defiantly to the victims’ families.
The so-called super trial is breaking records in Spain’s legal system. Prosecutors are asking for a sentence of 38,656 years in jail for each of the suspects, though under Spanish law the maximum time anyone can spend in jail is 40 years. More than 500 witnesses are scheduled to testify, 93,236 pages of evidence will be shown, and 25 foreign diplomats and an army of lawyers are taking part in the case of Europe’s deadliest al-Qaida-inspired bombings.
In the meantime, Escribano, who survived the tragedy of 11-M, was left with substantial injuries that to this day have not healed. She has a perforated right eardrum, and pieces of shrapnel are lodged in her cervical zone and in muscles, and cannot be removed surgically because they are too close to her spinal cord. While survivors like her are still dealing with health issues, their emotional wounds are taking much longer to heal.
No matter how deep those wounds are, Spaniards do have something to be proud of. Three years after 11-M, the justice system is turning its wheels. Regardless of the outcome, already dozens of suspects are being tried for the crimes. In the United States, where thousands more lost their lives to terrorism, justice does not even seem to be on the radar. Five years later, tough talk, a war, an invasion, hundreds of detainees, tortured Iraqi suspects, a wall and thousands of American soldiers dead, and still no one has paid for the crimes of Sept. 11.

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(Maria Elena Salinas is the author of “I AM MY FATHER’S DAUGHTER: LIVING A LIFE WITHOUT SECRETS.” Reach her at www
.mariaesalinas.com)
© 2007 by Maria Elena Salinas
Distributed by King Features Syndicate