Madrid will have a new memorial to commemorate 20 years since the 11-M attacks. Next Sunday, March 10, the Community of Madrid will inaugurate a new one to remember the 193 deaths and the more than 2,000 injured in the attacks. It will be an underground area of 2,000 square meters – of which, for now, only 1,200 square meters will be visitable – that will be located just under the roundabout where the previous monument was, which was removed for the expansion works of line 11 of the metro. . At the inauguration, a beam of blue light will be lit and projected into the sky to honor the victims. The screening will be seen again on Monday, March 11.
The underground memorial, as already announced in July, will have cobalt blue walls, the color chosen by the Victims' Associations, and will have the names of the deceased and some of the phrases that had been written on the previous monument engraved. . On the walls you can read messages such as “no to violence”, “we were all on that train”, “you will never leave completely” or “there is no path to peace, peace is the path”.
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 memorial on the surface will be like. The Community assures that, during the planning and construction of the project, communication has been maintained with the victims' associations.
The previous monument to the victims of 11-M was inaugurated in 2007 and consisted of a huge cylinder of glass bricks 11 meters high that contained the Vacío Azul room, where the messages written after the attacks were read. That underground space was 440 square meters.
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The memorial, however, went through several critical moments due to maintenance problems. In 2015, EL PAÍS revealed a report in which it was proven that the council had not paid resources for maintenance between 2008 and 2013, that the air conditioning system did not work, that there were leaks and that elements of the cylinder had come loose. Then, in 2023, the dismantling of the cylinder began as part of the preparation of the area for the expansion works on line 11.
At the end of February of this year, in addition, the City Council announced that the glass bricks of the cylinder would be delivered to associations of victims and citizens who wish to have the pieces. The delegate of Culture, Marta Rivera de la Cruz, explained during the plenary session on February 27, that they considered that “it was a good way to continue remembering and honoring the victims and preserving the memory of what happened on March 11.”
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