Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero led homage to the victims of the March 11 2004 Madrid train bombings in a quiet ceremony held on Saturday.
On a sunny spring day, two schoolchildren, an Algerian girl and a Spanish boy, opened the short commemoration ceremony at midday by placing a floral wreath in Madrid’s Retiro park in memory of the 191 victims of the bombings.
A rendition of Catalan composer Pau Casals’s El Cants dels Ocelles (Birdsong) by the young Spanish violinist Blanca Coines was followed by a five-minute silence.
As in 2005, the ceremony was held in the garden comprising 191 olive and cypress trees, planted to commemorate the victims of the attack exactly two years ago.
But the quiet memorial was in contrast to the national mourning observed in 2005, when King Juan Carlos was joined by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, the King of Morocco and about 20 heads of state in Madrid to take part in a conference on democracy and terrorism.
Earlier on Saturday a delegation from Morocco, believed to be where most of the bombing suspects are from, lit candles and placed flowers at Madrid’s Atocha station, which bore the brunt of the explosions.
An official silence of several minutes was observed in Madrid and at the suburban stations of El Pozo and Santa Eugenia, which were also hit by the bombings.
On Saturday night, an ecumenical ceremony was due to be held in memory of the Spanish, Romanian, Latin American, Moroccan and Polish students and workers killed in the attacks, closing the commemorations at the Atocha station.
As in 2005, groups representing the victims of the March 11 attacks kept a low profile, holding only small private gatherings.
But the Foundation for the Victims of Terrorism, mainly made up of victims of the Basques separatist organisation ETA, on Friday night held a concert by the London Philharmonic Orchestra attended by members of the Spanish royal family and Zapatero.
The concert was held in memory of the victims of both the Madrid attacks and the July 7 London bombings, which killed 56 people, four of them suicide bombers.
Judge Juan del Olmo is preparing to conclude his investigation into the bombings. According to court sources, he is expected to charge and send to trial between 30 and 40 of the 116 suspects.
The blasts killed 191 people and injured about 1 900 others in the country’s worst-ever such attack.
Islamic extremists sympathetic to al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for planting the 10 bombs on four trains in an apparent revenge attack for Spanish participation in the United States-led invasion of Iraq. — AFP
