Twenty years later, Madrilenians are still traumatized.
On the morning of March 11, 2004, during rush hour, ten coordinated explosions occurred in four commuter trains traveling towards Atocha station in Madrid, killing 191 people and injuring nearly 2,000 others.
The then Prime Minister, José Maria Aznar, and his Popular Party (PP) immediately blamed Basque separatists ETA who, since the late 1960s, have been responsible for the deaths of more than 800 people in the country.
A fiasco because, the same evening, a branch of Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the Madrid attack and demanded the withdrawal of Spanish forces intervening in Iraq.
In the general elections held four days later, the PP was swept aside by angry voters and the Socialist Party of José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero won the vote.
A few weeks later, seven people suspected of having participated in the attacks blew up the apartment in which they had been hiding, killing a member of the Spanish special forces.
But we had to wait another two years of difficult investigation to identify 29 other suspects, from local Islamist groups.
Twenty-one of them are convicted.
But ultimately, no direct link with a supranational terrorist organization has been clearly demonstrated.
Today, twenty years after the Madrid attacks, the families of the victims are still waiting for the truth.
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