Ruth Rogado was 25 years old on March 11, 2004. “That day I didn't go on the train.
"I fell asleep... I didn't get to see him that day."
20 years have passed since the darkest page of her life.
And he snorts when he remembers it.
Her father Ambrosio is one of the 192 killed in the 11-M attacks in Madrid.
Ruth speaks of “that day” with a deep feeling of sadness for having suffered an irreparable loss, but also with a bitterness contained by the ceremonial confusion that surrounded that date.
The Sunday following that massacre perpetrated by terrorist jihadism, Ruth went to vote on March 14: “I went with my father's ID, but they wouldn't let me, logically.”
Then many days would come digesting an endless mourning, the political and media hubbub, a succession of hoaxes that tried to twist reality, a trial... 20 years have passed since the most devastating attack in the history of Spain.
The afflicted testimony of Ruth Rogado, 20 years after those terrible events, is extremely impactful.
Her memory takes center stage in the documentary series
11M, four days in March that the
streaming
platform
Primeran, from the EiTB Media group, will begin broadcasting this Friday, March 8.
“Anyone who sees it,” says the documentary's director, Nico Ortiz, “will understand quite well what happened those days, the consequences it has had and where it has brought us 20 years later.”
More information
The big hoax: This is how the conspiracy theory was created after the 11-M attacks
11M, four days in March
is a “plural and diverse” parliament that gives voice to 38 key figures of that time.
Victims, judges, politicians, police officers, journalists... who were in the front row intervene.
Crucial protagonists do not take part, such as the former president of the Government José María Aznaz, his minister Ángel Acebes, the PP candidate Mariano Rajoy or the Lehendakari Juan José Ibarretxe.
All of them have refused to take part in this kind of
thriller
that begins with the detonations, the screams of terror, the first radio announcements that gave an account of the explosives that detonated in four suburban trains in Madrid.
The documentary consists of three chapters, each one hour long, that analyze the human and political consequences of that tragedy, the effects it had on the general elections in which the socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero won, the strategy that the losers (the PP) based on lies and manipulation to attribute some attacks to ETA when there were solid indications to conclude that the perpetrators were others, or the doubts that were raised from this side for a long time about the intellectual authorship of the attacks.
“I didn't care at that moment who had planted the bombs.
I wanted to know where my brother was,” says Diego Carrión at the beginning of the documentary.
His brother was traveling on one of those trains that ended up destroyed and he died on the eve of his 18th birthday.
Nico Ortiz emphasizes that the objective of the work he has directed “in record time” – all the interviews were carried out in just three weeks between last January and February – has been to “faithfully remember what happened and tell it from the vision that the victims had.” , politicians and the media.”
Expansive wave
“In no case has it been proposed as a new trial for anything or anyone,” says the director of the documentary.
11M, four days in March
is commissioned by Basque public television and produced by New Digital Media and La CoProductora (audiovisual production company of PRISA, publishing company of EL PAÍS).
Primeran will air the first episode this Friday and will broadcast the next two on March 15 and 22.
The narrative often focuses on the shock wave that the attacks had in the Basque Country.
ETA was active.
The documentary jumps from the horror images experienced in Atocha to aerial shots of the green meadows of the Basque Country with sheep grazing peacefully and the music of the
txalaparta
in the background.
The story says that a few weeks before March 11, two ETA bombs placed on trains going to Madrid were deactivated;
Just 10 days before, the Police located a van with 500 kilos of explosives in Cuenca.
Was it ETA, as the Aznar Government insisted on conveying?
“In the Basque Country it would have been a great
shock
to think that the Basques were capable of doing something like that,” says two decades later Arnaldo Otegi, leader of the nationalist
left
.
That day he showed his “absolute rejection” of some attacks that he described as a “massacre” in the name of his political party.
“The impact that 11M had in the Basque Country was different.
And this is how the guests narrate it in the documentary,” says Ortiz.
The editors of the Basque news media, as several officials at ETB, Euskadi Irratia or the Basque-language newspaper
Berria
attest in the series , came to understand that ETA could be behind all that: “It has already crossed the red lines with [the attack on ] Hypercor.
It could be,” Jaime Otamendi, then news director of Basque television, now acknowledges.
Miren Azkarate, spokesperson for the Basque Government chaired by Ibarretxe, admits that he thought “for a moment” that if ETA authorship was confirmed “that would take all of us Basques ahead.”
The fears that pointed to ETA were dispelled as the thesis that jihadist terrorism had detonated the explosives on the trains took shape.
The documentary breaks down the persistent campaign of the popular ones aimed at fueling a conspiracy theory that turned out to be unsustainable over time, the concealment of the truth, the self-serving poisonings to cover up the truth and hide an electoral failure.
Ruth Rogado takes the floor again and puts in her place the pain that the 11-M still causes her: “Wow, it's been a long time since she talked about this,” she says after some time.
She asks “forgiveness” because looking back at her excites him and prevents him from calmly articulating her words.
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