Francisco Javier Casas Torresano

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Francisco Javier Casas, aged 28, loved the music of Enrique Bunbury and the paintings of Salvador Dalí. He had started studying at the school of Arts and Trades, but soon packed it in to do computer studies. Although he was still living with his parents in Getafe, he had bought an apartment in Pinto, where he and his girlfriend planned to move that June. He was walking along one of the platforms on Atocha station when the bombs went off.

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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