It was two years ago that Al Qaeda murdered almost 200 people in Madrid. Iberian Notes, which at the time was virtually the only English-language weblog in Spain, was the first English-language "media outlet," if we can call ourselves that, on the story. Here's what we wrote that morning. I still vividly remember the experience of monitoring the television and the Internet. (The link for the original blog posts is at iberiannotes.blogspot.com)--go from there to the archives for March 2004.)

March 11, 2004

8:25: It is 8:25 AM here. Less than an hour ago somebody, most likely ETA, planted three bombs in the Madrid train stations of Atocha, Santa Eugenia, and El Pozo. Preliminary sources say five dead and a whole lot of injured. We'll come back to this story when we get some more information. Here's the link in Spanish from Libertad Digital.

8:43: The blast could be heard at a range of 200 kilometers.

Atocha is the city's main train station; it's in central Madrid very near the Prado. That is where it looks like the worst carnage happened.

The Gregorio Maranon hospital is going all-out with the injured coming in.

9:09: TV 3 is reporting fifty dead at Atocha. The explosions at the Santa Eugenia and El Pozo commuter stations east and northeast of downtown, respectively, also caused fatalities. The bombs were set to go off at rush hour and kill as many people as possible. Field hospitals have been set up outside each of the three stations. They have the first film images from outside Atocha and there are a good few walking wounded being attended to while more seriously injured people are being taken away by ambulance. One correspondent has seen the train that exploded at Atocha; it was a train of a locomotive and four cars. The last three passenger cars were completely destroyed and there were bodies on the tracks. There is at the very least a rumor that there is a carbomb set outside Atocha to go off in the middle of the chaos.

Our greatest sympathies toward and condolences for the people of Madrid. We will never forget this morning. Now all there is to do is let the emergency workers and police and doctors do their jobs.

9:17: They're showing film on TV 3. The Atocha train's third car has an enormous hole blown in its side and you can see the workers carrying away body bags. There are at least fifty dead and a hundred seriously injured. There's film of the walking wounded being attended to in the field hospitals. This is not the first time ETA has murdered during an election campaign, but never so big and never so close to election day. Central Madrid is paralyzed. The trains have been stopped and so have at least several subway lines.

Earlier reports of a bomb at the Madrid parliament building were wrong; the bomb was planted at the nearby Santa Eugenia station.

Nobody's claimed responsibility yet but this is clearly an ETA job. Prime Minister Aznar is meeting right now with his emergency cabinet. Rodrigo Rato is apparently on the scene, and Rodriguez Zapatero is supposed to be there at any time. The Basque lendekari Ibarretxe has condemned the bombings. The PP and PSOE are suspending all political campaigning.

9:31: Now they're talking 100 dead and 200 seriously injured in total at the three stations. There are not enough ambulances and the hospitals are filling up. They've made a call for blood donors. The film they're showing is just awful, and that's just the walking wounded and the body bags. 

9:51: This is just awful. Death estimates range from "dozens" to 100 to 150. They're still evacuating Atocha; we're quite clearly not being shown the very worst film, but what we're seeing is bad enough. They're not showing any dismembered bodies or uncovered dead people. I'm not complaining at all. It's damned obvious what we're seeing. There was a girl lying face down with blood everywhere while she was being attended to and a young boy who was completely covered with his own blood dazedly leaning against a traffic sign and a guy sitting on a stretcher while they carried him away with his shirt off and blood all over the place.

Rajoy has said that the election campaign is over for him right now, and I assume the same is true for Rodriguez Zapatero. TV 3 interviewed Carod-Rovira and he was speechless; the men he shook hands with did this, and he knows he was played for a fool. Ibarretxe has strongly condemned the bombing. He seems to mean it. I bet he fears an anti-Basque backlash, which I want to warn everybody about right now. The ETA did this, not the Basques. Most Basques are against ETA, and this has probably changed a few minds around there. I can only hope. Anyone who continues supporting Herri Batasuna or whatever it's called now is a cynical lover of assassins.

Note to Americans: This is NOT an Al Qaeda job. It's the ETA. Please make sure that CNN and company stop calling these murderers "separatists" or "guerrillas". Hey, if they get lucky and there are 160 deaths today, they'll have scored more than a thousand all-time.

10:20: There are some semi-official statements being made. The official provisional death count is 62, but the Tele 5 reporter says he can see several bodies inside or near the train that the police are leaving alone, either because they suspect another bomb or because they are giving all their attention to the living.

Well, they've shown the dead-body pictures, and damn, are they grim. Not much is being hidden from our eyes.

The bombs went off between 7:40 and 7:45 Madrid time. There were four: one on a train that went off at the El Pozo commuter station, another on a train that went off at the Santa Eugenia commuter station, a third on a train that went off at the Atocha commuter station, and a fourth on platform 2 at the Atocha commuter station. The Atocha long-distance and high-speed train stations were unaffected. All three trains bombed were on the Guadalajara-Alcala de Henares commuter line. In addition the cops blew up a suspicious Ford Fiesta outside the Atocha station in a controlled explosion. There are reports of another explosion, possibly controlled, at the El Pozo station. All train service through these three stations has been stopped, of course, including the long-distance and high-speed trains running through the main Atocha station. 

11:03: Figures for the number of dead range from a low of 62 to a high of 155. At least a dozen people were killed at each of three stations. There are still bodies inside the trains. 350 wounded people have been admitted to hospitals. Two more bombs were found, one at Atocha and the other at El Pozo, and were blown up in controlled explosions by the bomb squad. Madrid is completely snarled up. If I were in Madrid, I'd just stay home. You'll be one fewer person in the way. They don't want any more blood donations, so don't worry about that.

To Americans and Brits who know people in Madrid: If they're tourists just passing through it's highly unlikely they'd have been in any of the trains or commuter stations involved; same if they live in the city, because the victims seem to have been mostly working people taking the train into town from Guadalajara, Alcala de Henares, and Torrejon. If you should know someone from that area who works in Madrid, though, I'd be a little worried, but don't panic. Chances are he or she is OK; give him a chance to get hold of you when he can. Cell phone service in much of Madrid is out, so don't freak out if you can't get hold of him or her. If you have reason to think that one of your FAMILY MEMBERS was on one of the trains, call the police at 91 586 70 00 or RENFE, the train company, at 900 200 222. Don't just call there looking for general information.

There will be a demonstration tomorrow at 7 PM everywhere in Spain. I'm going, for whatever it's good for. 

12:10: The official death toll has risen to 131.

13:01: Attention Americans: They just interviewed a guy on Antena 3 named Michael from the United States. He said he had Spanish and American nationality, and lives and works in Madrid. His spoken Spanish was not very good. He was on one of the trains and two different bombs went off in his car. He suffered fairly mild injuries and was taken to the hospital in a police van.

So far the death toll is given at between 142 and 170. The number of wounded must be at least several hundred. At the Hospital Gregorio Maranon, they received 250 wounded. Their "catastrophe plan" is in effect, with all shifts on duty. They have performed 35 operations; six died on the table. Among the badly wounded are five children.

All of the wounded have apparently been evacuated and now they are removing the dead from the trains. At El Pozo they are lining up the body bags on the station platform. Many of the people on board the trains were university students and immigrant workers. There are four investigating magistrates on the scene, including Ruiz Polanco and Garzon. These are the people responsible for the death count of 142.

What we know so far: There were thirteen backpack bags, each loaded with fifteen kilos of titadine. Eleven of them went off in four different trains, two at Atocha, one at El Pozo, and one at Santa Eugenia. The police say that because of the explosive used it's a 90% probability ETA did it. They also say that a new technique was used in the making of the bombs.

Anyone needing information should call 112. The other numbers we gave are only for family members of possible victims, so don't call them unless you have reason to believe that one of your relatives might have been on one of those trains.

The government is saying relax and keep calm. That sounds like good advice. 

13:18: Well, here's CNN's report on the Madrid terror attack. Note that they call ETA the "Basque separatist group" when identifying them, but then they point out that the US and the EU both list ETA as a terrorist group, so I guess that's fair enough. I'd still prefer to see the word "terrorist" rather than "separatist", though. As idiotic as they are, Esquerra Republicana and Pepelu Carod-Rovira are merely separatists--they want Catalonia to separate from Spain--and not terrorists. Same with Eusko Alkartasuna. Terrorists are non-lawful bearers of arms who use violence and murder people for political ends. That definition sure fits ETA in my book, and not these other legitimate though wrongheaded political parties.

13:50: Interior Minister Angel Acebes just gave a press conference. He stated that there were at least 173 dead and some 600 injured. There were 13 bombs; 3 went off at Atocha, 4 in the neighborhood of the Calle Tellez, one at Santa Eugenia, and 2 at El Pozo. 3 booby traps were disactivated by the bomb squad. In response to a direct question, Acebes placed the responsibility on ETA. He pointed out that ETA frequently acts without warning and does not usually immediately claim responsibility. Evil scum Arnaldo Otegui, the "leader" of ETA's political branch, Batasuna or whatever they call themselves now, made a speech in which he denied ETA responsibility and blamed some unnamed Islamic group, a strategy which Acebes termed "miserable". 

14:11: They've announced the modus operandi of the bombing operations: what the killers did was simply get on a train, unobtrusively leave a pre-set backpack, and leave through another door before the train even left the station. This "rudimentary" technique, as they called it, worked perfectly, and it fits in with ETA capabilities now: three or four kids could have pulled this off, assuming the bombs were pre-manufactured for them in some ETA hideout near Hernani or whatever. There's absolutely no reason to suspect this was anything but an ETA job. It might be interesting to find out exactly what connection ETA has with international terrorist gangs like Al Qaeda, though.

14:56: The most recent figures are 175 dead and 898 wounded in Madrid. Prime Minister Aznar just spoke to the country, encouraging calm and security and emphasizing that the terrorists would be defeated through legal means. There will be no military coup. If this had happened in 1979, say, there might have been at the very least a declaration of martial law. Aznar emphasized that he is in control here, as Al Haig once wisely said. Aznar, in his speech, made a reference to Franklin Roosevelt's Pearl Harbor speech, saying that March 11 was a day of infamy. Aznar explicitly referred to the "international struggle against terrorism", and made all of our feelings very clear when he said, "We will defeat them".

I suppose that the elections scheduled for Sunday, March 14, will be held; we can't let the terrorists dictate the timing of the most basic process in our democracy.

Some of the film is really, really awful. Antena 3 showed a very badly damaged human torso, and there is apparently a good deal of film that is being held back, at least for now, and I certainly undestand why.