Javier Cid Madrid
Madrid
Updated Monday, March 11, 2024-00:03
That Thursday in March, chance spread its damned luck on the steel backs of four Cercanías trains.
Three minutes and ten bombs were enough to sew a terrible scar on the soul of a city that would never be the same again.
That he had to mourn his 193 dead while he treated his 2,000 wounded
in a
delirium tremens
of morgues and ambulances.
Chance, we said, made its conspiracy at rush hour;
At 7:37 the first explosion occurred in Atocha, which was followed by nine more explosions.
At 7:41 all that was left was the dismantled carriages and silence.
«Yes, I remember a cold silence.
The terrible smell.
The fear".
This is
Dori Majali, survivor of the worst attack in the history of Spain
, speaking on the thick edge of the anniversary, since there are already 20 years that separate her from terror.
She relives "the super blinding light of the explosion" and how her body "started spinning uncontrollably."
And when she opened her eyes and discovered that "there were no doors, seats or windows, and a large hole in the ceiling."
Dori was saved from her because two men who were traveling in front of her acted as a shield.
"I saw how they were dying at that moment
. "
Dori Majali, at home.
Once again, chance, so capricious, wanted Dori to travel on that train and not by car as was his custom.
"She had been working as an insurance adjuster for many years and never took the Cercanías," she explains.
«But two days before, on March 9, I had started in a new company and started taking the train.
I wanted to arrive early, do it well, I had plenty of time, I had that uncertainty of not knowing if I was going to be up to the task... What things, right?
On the third day a bomb exploded and everything was over
.
Of the flurry of memories that come and go like bites into his memory, Dori has left many behind on the path to his recovery.
"I don't know how long I was in the hospital and I'm not too interested in going back to the medical records to find out," she admits.
"I just know that when I woke up it was very hot, so it must have been well into summer."
She recites her aftermath, yes,
resigned but proud of everything achieved
: «My left leg was amputated below the knee and I had two open femur fractures on the right.
I suffered third degree burns up to the waist and first and second degree burns from the waist up.
Perforated eardrum.
And the worst thing: pieces of plastic from the shock wave became embedded all over the burned flesh, inside, and from time to time my body rejects them and I have to operate.
In these two decades,
Dori has undergone 22 interventions
.
"The last one at the end of 2022, which returned me to the wheelchair because the fragments were in the stump."
With a 98% disability (which today is 68%), Dori had to face not only the "ordeal" of the physical consequences - "
it took me months to reunite with my son
, who was four years old at the time, because at least I wanted "That he would recognize me when he saw me."
She also had to ride the emotional merry-go-round of losing her job.
"I had always wanted to study Law, it was my vocation, so
I enrolled in university and today I have my own office
."
Mª Luz Sabín, SAMUR doctor.
Mª Luz Sabín is a doctor from SAMUR, the capital's municipal emergency and emergency health care service, and when she was arriving at her workplace on March 11, 2004, she received a call with a warning: «There have been several explosions in Madrid, you have to go to Atocha.
Upon approaching the station, the Police diverted them to Téllez Street, parallel to the tracks, where four bombs had just destroyed cars 1, 4, 5 and 6 of train No. 17305. Sabín was transferred to the
field hospital set up in time. record in the facilities of the Daoiz y Velarde sports center
, a former military barracks a few meters from the railway line.
"We placed those who were worse off lying on the center court of the sports center," he recalls.
«We supported those who were a little better on the walls.
And those who could walk because they were moderately well, left on their own."
To put some numbers to the tragedy:
at the center on Téllez Street, 165 victims were treated
, of which 25 were critical, 30 were very serious, and the rest were mild or moderate.
There were 63 people "for whom we could do nothing", only two died during the transfer and the 15 who died later "had very serious injuries that could not be resolved."
Above the numbers, the focus on Téllez Street was
where the pulse of citizen solidarity was most noticeable
.
This is how this doctor remembers it: «Many neighbors came down, and I asked them to stay with the most seriously injured.
She told them: 'Do not separate yourself from this person, and if you notice that their breathing changes, let me know.'
And
thanks to that help we were able to save many lives
.
For Sabín, however,
the worst came later
.
"I am prepared to care for the patient at the scene of the accident or, in this case, the attack," she acknowledges.
«But we also participated in the subsequent management of the catastrophe, at Ifema.
The morgue, the autopsies, the identification of the bodies were centralized there... I had a list of the dead, and when a family came to ask about a missing person... That weighed on my spirit more than the wounded after the explosions. ».
In fact,
all health workers who participated in 11-M were offered psychological help
.
"I went to two or three sessions," explains Sabín, who was also in the Spanair accident.
«The first thing they told us was that we had to return to the scene of the attack.
Two or three days later, I went.
At first I had tachycardia
, and although I have returned many times later, something stays with you.
Fernando Munilla is 60 years old today.
"Those of us who lived through that and are still active can be counted on one hand," recalls this firefighter who on March 11
was about to end his shift after a quiet night
.
«When they tell me that there has been an explosion in Santa Eugenia, we activate the means and go there with a fire truck with eight troops.
As I passed in front of Atocha, I saw a wave of impressive people leaving the station, and I notified the headquarters to ask for reinforcements:
'I'm going to Santa Eugenia, but something has happened here too
. '
On this occasion it was car four of a train still stopped at the station, and which had just closed its doors, that
claimed 14 victims
.
"We treated the wounded who had been thrown along the tracks and those who were able to walk on their own, because those who were left inside were already corpses," says Munilla, who still today finds it difficult to recount
the hardest episode of all his years of service. trade
"We evicted them as best we could, even with benches of street furniture that we ripped out, because at that time the trucks did not carry so many stretchers."
An hour later, with the focus already under control, Munilla and his companions moved to the Pozo del Tío Raimundo, where the needs were much more complex - with two-story cars
"that we had to support with wood, with struts, to be able to access them." to the bodies»
-.
And again the memory of that silence emerges.
“We looked at each other while we worked,” she explains.
«
It was the way of telling us: 'I understand you, we are together
. '
And all in the middle of a silence only broken by some shock when a body moved.
Two decades later, Munilla acknowledges, those images still weigh too much: "It is a very beautiful profession but it has moments like that, very hard, that you gradually overcome, over the years."
Beatriz Alba, SUMMA 112 nurse.
Beatriz Alba was six months pregnant on the day of the attacks
.
A nurse at SUMMA 112, the Health Emergency service of the Community of Madrid, she was occupying a position in the offices due to her condition.
However, when she began to hear the sirens at a quarter to eight in the morning, she got into an ambulance that was preparing to leave the headquarters on Antracita Street.
"My manager, when she saw me, stood in front of me and told me: 'You get down from there right now, I need you upstairs," she explains.
And her job that morning was to coordinate with the Madrid hospitals the needs of the hundreds of wounded for their transfer.
«Today this is protocolized, but then we had to do it on the fly: call to ask about the available beds
based on the pathologies that we were encountering
: burns, neurosurgery... What impressed me most is that every time I called a hospital, and I made rounds every 10 minutes, it offered me more and more beds.
"An incredible effort was made to care for all the injured."
In the midst of the tension of those hours that seemed to never end, Alba highlights, however,
the solidarity of the rest of the autonomous communities
, which offered themselves to Madrid in whatever was needed: «I remember Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, Catalonia... There was a wave of solidarity that I had not experienced before.
And what was the lesson that Beatriz Alba learned from that endless day?
«I'm not
wonder woman
.
Because we are always called to a situation of chaos in which we know what to do, and on March 11, although we knew the protocol, it overwhelmed us.
In a situation like this, you stick to the procedure and work in automatic mode, you cannot let yourself be hijacked by emotion, because if you block yourself you are of no use.
But
we are not infallible, and being aware of your vulnerability makes you learn
.
Cayetano Abad, in his Valle de la Cantarería cheese factory.
One of the things that has helped Cayetano Abad the most to deal with what happened is talking about it.
He was 44 years old when
he was traveling from Santa Eugenia to Atocha with his 14-year-old daughter
.
"Thank God we survived," he says.
«She was reading, and the bomb exploded three meters away when she bent down to put the book in her backpack.
That saved her.
I remember the first bomb.
The lights of the carriage that went off and on.
And then, the second explosion.
There was only silence, and the sound of cell phones calling, and calling, and calling.
My only obsession was getting out of the car with my daughter, walking over the corpses...».
Cayetano, an electrician by profession, was an official in the Ministry of Finance.
He had surgery on one ear, he suffered double vision, burns...
Two years later, a court forced him to return to work.
"It wasn't pleasant, because I wasn't fit and my boss didn't want me there, so he had me changing plugs all day."
However, that return full of uncertainties gave him the push to change his life.
"I thought:
'Where do I feel better?'
.
With the animals and when I return to the town, to the origins », she explains.
«I asked for a transfer to another Ministry, where today I continue working six months a year for partial retirement, and I studied a degree in Dairy Industries.
"I had always had the idea of making my own cheese on my mind, and during the pandemic I jumped into the pool."
Today, Cayetano
runs the Valle de la Cantarería cheese factory
in Canalejas del Arroyo, a small town in La Alcarria, Cuenca, where he also takes care of 80 goats.
"They are
artisanal cheeses, called Ardal and Valhondo
, in which we infuse native plants such as lavender, thyme or rosemary."
-And your daughter?
-She is a veterinarian and agricultural engineer, so
she is the one who carries all the weight of the business
.
Come on, she has become the boss... and let's say no more.