Abel García Alfageme

Description

Abel García Alfageme’s penchant for astrology led his friends to nickname him “Alfa” after the star of the same name. Aged 27, he had been living with his girlfriend in Parla for two years. Apart from working as a lift mechanic, he enjoyed amateur theatrics. On 2 April, he and the other members of his drama group were due to open The First Stone, an adaptation of Calderón de la Barca’s Great Theatre of the World, in the Jaime Salom rooms in Parla. He was killed as he was changing trains at Atocha station.

11 March 2004 fell on a Thursday. Early that morning, a number of terrorists with links to Al-Qaeda planted thirteen bombs on four suburban trains covering routes running through Madrid. Ten of the bombs exploded between 7.37 and 7.39 am, when the trains were at Atocha, El Pozo and Santa Eugenia stations and alongside Calle Téllez. 191 people were killed in the attack and around 1,500 were wounded. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in Spanish history. On 3 April 2004, agents from the Special Operations Group (GEO) were about to enter an apartment in Leganés where the perpetrators of the attacks were believed to be hiding when the terrorists detonated twenty kilograms of explosives in an act of collective suicide. The ensuing blast killed one of the officers, bringing the total number of people killed by the 11 March bombers to 192.

Images

Audio

Press