Madrid will receive a new monument to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 11M attacks. Next Sunday, March 10, the Community of Madrid will inaugurate a new memorial to commemorate the 193 dead and more than 2,000 injured in the attacks. It is an underground area of 2,000 square meters – of which only 1,200 square meters can be visited for now – which will be located directly under the roundabout where the previous monument was located, which was removed for the expansion work of route 11 of the subway. . At the dedication, a beam of blue light is lit and projected into the sky to honor the victims. The screening will be shown again on Monday, March 11th.
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The underground memorial, as announced in July, will have cobalt blue walls, the color chosen by the victims' associations, and will have the names of the deceased engraved, as well as some of the phrases that were written on the previous memorial. On the walls you can read messages such as “No to violence”, “We were all on that train”, “You will never completely go away” or “There is no way to peace, peace is the way”.
Texts in Basque, Catalan, English, French, Portuguese, Arabic, Ukrainian, Romanian, Polish, Bulgarian and Georgian will also be collected at the venue. However, it remains unknown what the projection of the monument on the surface will look like. The community assures that communication with the victims' associations was maintained during the planning and construction of the project.
The previous memorial to the victims of 11-M was inaugurated in 2007 and consisted of a huge 11-meter-high cylinder made of glass blocks that housed the Vacío Azul room, where messages written after the attacks were read. This underground room was 440 square meters.
The previous monument in Atocha, in a photo from 2018.KIKE PARA
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However, due to maintenance issues, the monument experienced several critical moments. In 2015, EL PAÍS published a report proving that the municipality had not paid funds for maintenance between 2008 and 2013, that the air conditioning was not working, that there were leaks and that elements of the cylinder had come loose. Dismantling of the cylinder began in 2023 as part of the preparation of the site for the expansion work of line 11.
At the end of February this year, the city council also announced that the glass stones of the cylinder would be delivered to victims' associations and citizens who want the pieces. Cultural delegate Marta Rivera de la Cruz stated during the plenary session on February 27th that she believed that “it is a good way to continue to remember and honor the victims and the memory of the events of March 11th to preserve.”
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