Rex Ferrer Reymado

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20-year-old Rex Ferrer, a young man of Filipino origin, sang in a choir. On 10 March 2004, he accidentally left his backpack behind in the church where the choir rehearsed. A fervent religious believer, he belonged to the Church of Christ and had once said that he did not fear death because he firmly believed in the existence of another life. He worked as a waiter and was also training to be a carpenter. On the morning of 11 March, he left home earlier than usual to pick up the backpack he had left behind the day before. He was on the suburban train that was travelling through Atocha station when the bombs went off and was killed in the blast.

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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