Cipriano Castillo Muñoz

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Cipriano Castillo’s son, Raúl, described his father as “discreet, honest, neat and upright”. He said that he had only learned to read at the age of thirteen and perhaps as a result had become a keen reader. Each morning he would spend his time on the train between San Fernando de Henares and Chamartín reading. He died as a result of the explosions 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.

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