The terrorist attack in Madrid last week that left 200 people dead and thousands injured also hit the Spanish students studying in Delft hard. But they won’t let it torment them.
It’s Monday afternoon, around one o%clock. The Dutch train service NS has just observed three minutes of silence on all its trains and elsewhere Dutch Vice-Premier Gerrit Zalm left a wreath of condolence at the Spanish Embassy in Den Haag. A group of Spanish TU physics and chemical engineering students have just finished eating lunch at the Aula. They are unaware of these Dutch acts of national condolence. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t consumed by thoughts of the attacks and its terrible consequences. This is especially true of post-doc Cesar Mateo, who is from Madrid. “Actually, you shouldn’t interview me,” he says. “I’m too angry, I’m too close to it.” Mateo had immediately phoned his family and friends in Madrid when he heard news of the attacks, but he was never really worried that they were victims: “They all live in another part of the city and don’t travel by train, they’re extremely lucky.”
Mateo immediately suspected that the Basque separatist movement ETA was behind the attacks. His friends also thought so. But Marte Mes, a post-doc from Barcelona, didn’t believe it was ETA: “ETA has never before carried out such a large-scale attack and moreover they usually gave warnings whenever they had planted bombs.” For the students, it’s clear that al-Qaida is behind the attack. That’s alarming, says Fernando Moreno, a post-doc from Asturias: “Now we have another problem, in addition to ETA.” And he laments the fact that the attacks influenced Spain’s presidential election: “Because of al-Qaida, we now have another government and our troops will be pulled out of Iraq. That sets a bad precedent. Terrorism pays, that’s the message.”
But yet, daily life must go on, the students say. And that’s already happening, says PHD Pablo Jarillo: “Everything’s functioning again. The shock will disappear more quickly than 9-11. That attack was much larger.” Jarillo says he’s not scared and believes the people who demonstrated in Madrid aren’t scared, either. Mes, however, disagrees. She thinks her fellow Spaniards are still in shock. The students however are reasonably calm. They’ll not allow their educations to be disrupted. “We’ve gone back to work,” Jarillo says. Back to life, back to reality.
The terrorist attack in Madrid last week that left 200 people dead and thousands injured also hit the Spanish students studying in Delft hard. But they won’t let it torment them. It’s Monday afternoon, around one o%clock. The Dutch train service NS has just observed three minutes of silence on all its trains and elsewhere Dutch Vice-Premier Gerrit Zalm left a wreath of condolence at the Spanish Embassy in Den Haag. A group of Spanish TU physics and chemical engineering students have just finished eating lunch at the Aula. They are unaware of these Dutch acts of national condolence. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t consumed by thoughts of the attacks and its terrible consequences. This is especially true of post-doc Cesar Mateo, who is from Madrid. “Actually, you shouldn’t interview me,” he says. “I’m too angry, I’m too close to it.” Mateo had immediately phoned his family and friends in Madrid when he heard news of the attacks, but he was never really worried that they were victims: “They all live in another part of the city and don’t travel by train, they’re extremely lucky.”
Mateo immediately suspected that the Basque separatist movement ETA was behind the attacks. His friends also thought so. But Marte Mes, a post-doc from Barcelona, didn’t believe it was ETA: “ETA has never before carried out such a large-scale attack and moreover they usually gave warnings whenever they had planted bombs.” For the students, it’s clear that al-Qaida is behind the attack. That’s alarming, says Fernando Moreno, a post-doc from Asturias: “Now we have another problem, in addition to ETA.” And he laments the fact that the attacks influenced Spain’s presidential election: “Because of al-Qaida, we now have another government and our troops will be pulled out of Iraq. That sets a bad precedent. Terrorism pays, that’s the message.”
But yet, daily life must go on, the students say. And that’s already happening, says PHD Pablo Jarillo: “Everything’s functioning again. The shock will disappear more quickly than 9-11. That attack was much larger.” Jarillo says he’s not scared and believes the people who demonstrated in Madrid aren’t scared, either. Mes, however, disagrees. She thinks her fellow Spaniards are still in shock. The students however are reasonably calm. They’ll not allow their educations to be disrupted. “We’ve gone back to work,” Jarillo says. Back to life, back to reality.
Comments are closed.