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Description

Born in: Castilla-La Mancha
Age: 22
Offspring: 0
Marital status: Single
Job: AVE maintenance employee (equivalent to the TGV in Spain)
Date of the attack: 11/03/2004
Place of the attack: Madrid
Weapon: Others explosives
Killed by: Islamic terrorism

Description

David Santamaría was 22 years old and had been working for two weeks as a maintenance worker on the AVE high-speed train. He caught the same train each day from Guadalajara –where he lived– to Alcobendas, Madrid. He had been going out with his girlfriend for three years and they had become inseparable. On the morning of 11 March, he was travelling with his friend, David Senent. Both men were killed at El Pozo 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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