Juan Antonio Sánchez Quispe

Description

Juan Antonio Sánchez Quispe, a native of Peru, had been living in Spain with his wife for eleven years and was about to take Spanish citizenship. He had two boys, aged 16 and 14. He was proud to have been able to buy a house in Vallecas (Madrid) after years of saving and sacrifice. Each morning he travelled from there by train to Atocha station to go to the cleaning company where he worked. It was where that he lost his life.

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