Stefan Budai

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Stefan Budai had been living in Spain for two and a half years. He had emigrated from his native Romania in search of a better future for his wife and nine-year-old daughter. He lived in Alcalá de Henares (Madrid) and worked in construction. On 11 March 2014 he boarded the train heading to one of the sites where he was working in Aravaca. He was at Santa Eugenia station when the bombs went off. It took nine days for his body to be identified.

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 blast killed one of the officers, bringing the total number of people killed by the 11 March killers to 192.

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