As someone who (when in Spain) lives in Alcalá, with friends and family living there, well... Jeez
This story haunts me (a little) because, as said above, I was an ERASMUS exchange student in Spain at the time, although in Andalucia, not Madrid. It lasted nearly 5 months, between February 3 and June 21. I was in Malaga and travelled to Cordoba (that Saturday 28, February 2004, actually !!!), Sevilla, Granada, Ronda, Gibraltar... a pretty awesome time in my life, except that horror of course, that hit me in the face.
My flat mates (we were four to pay the bills) were Spanish but not particularly from Andalucia but every other corner of Spain... making the horror even closer. Fuck. I went to the peace protests the next day, March 12, in solidarity with the country that had welcomed me some weeks before the tragedy.
Something that burned in my mind is that peculiar spanish tradition of aplauding at the end of a ceremony. Obviously in France (and elsewhere) AFAIK you applaudes when you are happy or enthusiast, at a music concert but not exactly after Charlie or Bataclan comemorative ceremonies. In spain it's different, people applause at the end of a ceremony, in respect. This made the protests even more surreal, to me.
The ETA / A-Q coincidence is even more disturbing, of course, because of the PP major blunder (lie) that cost them the elections. Note that between 11 and 14 march 2004 they did not knew where and when the explosives had entered the Madrid area. Trashorras was arrested on March 18,
after the PP lost the elections.
But imagine the faces of the PP officials when they realized that, while ETA and A-Q attacks were 100% unrelated, they (coincidentally) carried their explosives to Madrid the same night !!!!
For some, it was too much of a coincidence, hence "ETA + A-Q" conspiracy theories that the 2007 trial of Trashorras and surviving terrorist carefully debunked.
As for myself, like many others I watched the news on February 29 2004 when they stopped the ETA death squad. And when the trains exploded 12 days later, like everybody else I wondered "THIS IS ETA PLAN B" that is "Well, the bastards had 500 kg of explosives in the van, perhaps they kept some for a Plan B attack, and there it is. Son of a bitch"
And there come the PP blunder - they played on that very feeling "We stopped ETA plan A but unfortunately the bastards had a Plan B, some explosives left to blow trains".
Although that hypothesis did not lasted long. The trains blew up at 8 in the morning, by 12, conclusive proof already pointed to A-Q. Plus the horrific death toll that actually scared the shit out of ETA itself (which says a lot).
Seriously, that entire story has the potential for some awesome political thriller. It is a remarquable example of Ian Malcolm beloved chaos theory.
Imagine if the PP had known
before 14 M that both ETA and A-Q loads of explosives had travelled to Madrid, converging on that city the same night - and turned the coincidence into a conspiracy linking ETA and A-Q (as they did OTL,
somewhat - BUT with that intriguing coincidence of February 28, as a proof of "THEY DID IT TOGETHER").
Imagine (as suggested above) if the ETA truck had not been stopped, and poor Alcala had been twice martyred.
Although I hate death, violence and terrorism, I'm tempted to write a TL based on all this. No conspiracy (I hate conspiracies theories) just the Murphy law (which can make in real life things even more bizarre than any conspiracy).