Garden of Remembrance

Madrid, two years after the bombings

In December 2004 she gave a dramatic one-hour speech in Congress, broadcast live by Spanish TV.

In her gripping monologue, Pilar Manjón condemns both left and right wing politics. It is her belief that the politicians used the bombings to settle a banal political dispute over the bodies of the dead, who were no longer able to vote. Since then, Manjón has received death threats from the extreme right who hold her responsible for the election defeat.

For Eulogio Paz, the father of Daniel Paz, there is a direct link between the photo of Bush, Blair and Jose Maria Aznar, then president of the Spanish government (taken in the Azores, where they fraternally declared war on Iraq) and the attacks in Madrid. According to Paz, Islamic extremists executed his son, but Aznar indirectly issuing the order. In their grief, others involved in the bombings - either in the train themselves, or through the loss of a child - point to politics as the cause of their shredded lives.

On 11 March 2005, exactly a year after the bombings, in the Retiro Park, Madrid, 192 cypress trees were planted and called the “Forest of the Departed”.

For Pilar Manjón, the name of the monument is meaningless. The dead she mourns are still present, in the hearts and souls of herself and her people.

Based on the story of Manjón, composer Paul Van Brugge composed seven ‘Sketches of Pain’. In the film, director Ramon Gieling plays the music to those whose lives were touched by the bombings. Their faces, evocative of El Greco paintings, reflect the hell of 11 March 2004.