María Pilar Cabrejas Burillo

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Pilar Cabrejas suffered from Crohn’s disease and had been off work. Although her doctors had recommended that she take a further two weeks’ leave, she was determined to go back to her job, to which she was devoted. Her boyfriend, Jesús, later said that on the morning of 11 March, he believed that Pilar would take care of him when he was an old man. “They’ve stolen my future,” he said. Pilar was killed on the train that was blown up beside Calle Téllez.

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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