Another year goes by, and still the poisonous legacy of the March 11 bombings remains. I wrote this a year ago, but sadly, it still applies: Another anniversary of the Madrid terrorist attacks of March 11, 2004, comes and goes and with it, another storm of acrimony that highlights, in the ugliest way possible, Spain’s divisions. It’s now eight years since bombs planted by Islamic radicals were detonated on trains in or near Madrid during the morning rush hour, killing 191 people and injuring nearly 2,000 more. Enough time, you would think, for society to digest and come to terms with the attack, if not the grief it caused. But as dozens of relatives of those killed gathered … [Read more...] about March 11, again
conspiracy
March 11’s divisive legacy
In the middle of February, the Spanish government announced that it was going to “repair” the memory of the poet Miguel Hernández, a Republican former goatherd who was jailed by the dictator Francisco Franco and died in prison in 1942, at the age of 31. The Socialist government pledged to offer Hernández, whose centenary is being celebrated this year, “the tribute, the memory and the admiration that his work merits,” said Deputy Prime Minister María Teresa Fernández de la Vega. “We all share that same rejection of any form of oppression, that same rebellion in the face of injustice and that determination to dream and create a decent country and a better world.” The news of this homage … [Read more...] about March 11’s divisive legacy