On the morning of March 11, Sara Levin ’05 woke up at 8:30 a.m in Madrid.
“I ate breakfast, turned on the news and was just in shock,” Levin said.
Levin was reacting to reports on the train bombings that ripped through four commuter cars in central Madrid during the early morning rush hour. The most devastating bomb exploded on a train approaching the city’s main Atocha train station, which Levin and her fellow students frequent daily in order to commute to school.
Levin is studying abroad this semester in Wesleyan’s Madrid program with eleven other University students and nine students from other American universities.
“It was frightening to see [on the TV screen] a place that is so familiar to me, a place I go to every day, in chaos, the streets covered in blood,” Levin said. “Then the death toll kept rising. At first they said maybe 20 people had been killed, an hour later 40, an hour later 100. And it just kept rising.”
Director of International Studies Carolyn Sorkin, who recently went to visit Wesleyan’s study abroad programs in France and Spain, was in Madrid on the morning of the terror attacks. She was in a cab headed for the train station.
“I assumed that the express train for Seville left from Chamartin Station,” Sorkin said, “but a doubt arose in my mind as I was in the cab and I asked the taxi driver. He told me that it left from Atocha Station, so we turned around and headed back across town. Because of my mistake, we arrived at Atocha five minutes after the bombs went off rather than five minutes before.”
The director of the Spanish Program in Madrid, Professor of Spanish Literature Antonio Gonzalez, learned of the attacks in his Madrid apartment when his wife called him after she had already left for work.
“Immediately after I discovered what had happened, I began contacting students by cell phone to be sure they were safe and I told them to stay home,” Gonzalez said. “That evening I invited everyone in the program to come to my house, simply to be together. We really didn’t talk very much about what happened that night.”
“It was a generous and thoughtful gesture on Professor Gonzalez’s part,” Sorkin said, who was present at the gathering that evening. “I think [being together] made everyone feel a little calmer.”
Gonzalez informed students of precautions to take to avoid drawing attention to themselves as Americans. These included reducing their use of English in public places and not traveling in large groups.
No one in the Wesleyan program was injured as a result of the terrorist attacks in Madrid. As mind-blowing as the terror attacks were for Wesleyan students in Madrid, what may have been as great a surprise were the massive demonstrations that ensued in the days following the bombings.
Over two million Spaniards flooded the streets to mourn and stand for peace on Friday night, the night following the attacks.
“I’ve never seen so many people in my life,” Levin said.
This massive terror attack, said to be Europe’s most deadly since World War II, was executed only days before Spain’s national election for Prime Minister on Sunday, March 14.
Initially, ETA, a militant Basque separatist group, was suspected of the terrorist attack. The day after the attack, government officials in Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar’s Popular party placed the blame on ETA, a Basque separatist organization that has executed numerous terrorist attacks predating the fall of General Franco’s dictatorship.
This accusation was made despite intelligence information that pointed to a terrorist group affiliated with the Islamic fundamentalist organization Al Qaeda.
Because Aznar’s self-appointed replacement was facing a contentious vote only days after the attack, it is suspected that his hasty indictment of ETA was politically motivated.
In response to Aznar’s perceived manipulation of facts for his party’s political gain, hundreds of thousands of people returned to the streets to protest against their Prime Minister after the previous night’s peace march.
“Unfortunately, even though terrorism is terrorism, naming the culprit made a huge difference in the elections,” Levin said. “If it had clearly been ETA, Aznar’s party probably would have won. However, naming al Qaeda could have ignited an upset because Aznar did not listen to Spanish citizens who voted against going into Iraq.”
The national elections were held on Sunday as planned, and the Popular party was defeated handily by Jose Zapatero of the Socialist party.
Gonzalez argues that the outcome of the election was not solely based on the scandal surrounding the terrorist attacks.
“I don’t think 3 million Spaniards moved to the Socialist party overnight,” Gonzalez said. “I think it’s a result of accumulated indignation. First, with Aznar’s poor handling of the oil spill off the coast of Galicia and then with his decision to enter the war in Iraq when polls said just about 90 percent of Spaniards opposed it.”
Levin, who is a resident of Manhattan, N.Y, has experienced the chaos and tragedy caused by the terror attacks at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. As the attacks in Madrid have been referred to as Europe’s 9/11, Levin provides a unique perspective into the contrasting reactions of Americans and Spaniards in response to their national tragedies.
“I remember visiting New York a couple of days after 9/11 and there was only a small crowd of people gathered at Union Square. An overall fear dominated the streets. Here, millions of people have poured into the streets. ”
Gonzalez recalls George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton embracing publicly after 9/11.
“In the U.S, political differences seemed to fall by the wayside,” Gonzalez said.
As 9/11 brought many Americans to stand behind their government, it seems that because of Aznar’s swift decision to blame ETA, Spaniards quickly became mistrustful of their leadership and voted the Popular party out of office.
Gonzalez said that the Madrid attacks have disrupted the routines of Wesleyan students on the program only slightly.
“The students are very resilient and mature and, inadvertently, I think they’ve received quite an education in grassroots movements,” Gonzalez said.
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