11M: The Terrorist Attack that Shook Spain, 20 years on

Inside Atocha station (image courtesy of author, Becca Hemingway)

Twenty years ago today, in the early morning of the 11th of March 2004, thousands of commuters in Madrid were faced with the unknowable horror of a highly sophisticated terrorist attack that involved 13 bombs, each containing 10kg of dynamite and 650 grams of shrapnel, placed in 12 different carriages across 4 trains, which exploded simultaneously. The attack ended up killing 191 and injuring over 1,800 victims. The trains ran along the line connecting Alcalá de Henares with Madrid’s central station, Atocha. The attack took place 3 days before Spain’s upcoming general elections where José María Aznar’s PP (Partido Popular) were going head-to-head against rival party PSOE (Partido Socialista Oberero Español). Aznar’s time as Spanish Prime Minister (1996-2004) ended largely due to his party’s manipulation and misinformation regarding the group behind the 11M attacks, which has since been further exposed with a tell-all documentary on Netflix named 11M: Terror in Madrid (José Gómez, 2022), which provides a brutal account of the then-government’s lack of professionalism in the face of international terror. Essentially, PP insisted, despite contradictory evidence apparent from the beginning of the investigation of the attack, that it was the Basque terrorist group ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna) behind the bombing. The following game of smoke and mirrors is the main focus of the documentary, revealing the government’s lies and the politicisation of the suffering of victims, however, the documentary also investigates the aftereffects of such terror not only in Madrid, but also Spain as a nation.  

Immediately after the attack, the Leftist party PSOE declared that they did not think ETA was behind the bombing, while PP insisted that they were entirely sure of ETA’s involvement. There have been discrepancies regarding the sort of explosive material used by the terrorists in the attack, which since has been linked to the usual material of terrorist groups linked to Al-Qaeda, however the PP government, before any analysis had been conducted, claimed that the explosive material used was the same as that of ETA’s previous attacks in Spain, thus, creating a link between the group and the attack that was entirely false. Newspapers such as El País and El Mundo received phone calls directly from Aznar who sanctioned the information of ETA’s culpability to be released to the public, before any forensic investigation had been carried out. The government’s declaration was contradicted as evidence surfaced that pointed to jihadist involvement: specifically, the discovery of a tape recording of verses of the Quran being read in Arabic that was found in a van parked near Alcalá station that contained 5 of the detonators. The game being played by the PP government lasted practically up until the elections that took place on the 14th of March, which saw their rival party, PSOE, take victory. The public were overwhelmingly of the opinion that the Al-Qaeda attacks were a direct result of Spain’s unpopular decision to support the US in the Iraq War (2003-2011); which meant José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s (Spanish PM 2004-2011) first move as the new PSOE government leader was to withdraw Spanish forces from Iraq. This decision was controversial, especially in the States, as people saw it as an act of appeasement, giving the terrorist group what they supposedly wanted. 

The tumultuous aftermath of such an internationally traumatic event persists to this day as there continues to be a “deep resentment at the way former Prime Minister José María Aznar reacted to the attacks”. There remain people, typically falling on the political Right, who continue to believe that the attack was in one way or another linked to ETA, while others on the political Left seem convinced that it was Al-Qaeda. However, since 2004, academics and other political scientists, such as Fernando Reinares, have revealed a more subversive theory of the real story behind the 11M attacks. This new interpretation maintains that the attacks had nothing to do with ETA, nor Spain’s involvement in Iraq, but rather that there had been a gradual increase in jihadism in Spain in the 1990s and early 2000s that the government had not recognised due to being so caught up with the internal threat of ETA. Reinares even goes on to claim that the attack on Madrid had been decided at a meeting between jihadists in Pakistan in the December of 2001; 2 years before Spain’s involvement in the Iraq war. The conclusion of Reinares, and other similar arguments, has been an emphasis on the necessity for international cooperation in the face of global terrorism, and the need for Muslim communities to denounce those who express extremist beliefs before any further attacks are carried out on innocent victims. In light of this, since 2004, the Spanish government has been a major force in pursuing the necessary cooperation between European countries and the USA, as well as establishing connections with Islamic countries where Al-Qaeda and other groups are based.  

Even now, one can see the scars of horror in stations across Spain, but especially those in Madrid, with security guards placed on each platform, each train, and at the barriers; the fear of a repeat of 11M is immense. Yet overall, despite the political rupture caused by the 11M attacks 20 years ago, it seems important, now more than ever, for Spaniards to come together and, as the Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz said on the 10-year anniversary of the attack, “to look at what unites us, not at what divides us”.