What Happened to the Terrorists
On 31 October 2007, the Audiencia Nacional of Spain found 21 guilty on a range of charges from forgery to murder. Two of the defendants were sentenced each to more than 40,000 years in prison, but Spanish law limits the actual time served to 40 years.
On 3 April 2004, in Leganés, south Madrid, four Arab terrorists died in an apparent suicide explosion, killing one Grupo Especial de Operaciones (GEO) (Spanish special police assault unit) police officer and wounding eleven policemen. According to witnesses and media, between five and eight suspects escaped that day.
Security forces carried out a controlled explosion of a suspicious package found near the Atocha station and subsequently deactivated the two undetonated devices on the Téllez train. A third unexploded device was later brought from the station at El Pozo to a police station in Vallecas, and became a central piece of evidence for the investigation. It appears that the El Pozo bomb failed to detonate because a cell-phone alarm used to trigger the bomb was set 12 hours late.
Social
After the bombings, in France, the Vigipirate national security alert system was upgraded to orange level. In Italy, the Government declared a state of high alert.
People across Spain flocked to hospitals and mobile blood donation units in such numbers that the need for blood for transfusions was more than satisfied by 10:30, although continued donations were requested for the coming days. The deceased were moved to IFEMA, the largest convention centre in Madrid, for identification by their relatives.
On 12 March 2004, Spaniards took to the streets protesting against the bombings in a government-organized demonstration to condemn ETA, which at the time was being blamed for the attacks. However, during the trail, the Court dismantled one by one all conspiracy theories and demonstrated that any link or implication of the bombings with ETA was either misleading or without any foundation.
Political
The attacks came three days before the Sunday elections.
A decree declaring three days of official mourning was issued by the government, and five minutes of silence were observed on Friday. Demonstrations were called for Friday evening in cities across the country, under the motto "With the victims, with the constitution and for the defeat of terrorism". The Catalan government led by Pasqual Maragall also declared official mourning in Catalonia. The government's chosen motto was very criticized by all the opposition because the "with the Constitution" inclusion in the motto implied that the bombs were set by the ETA, while many in the opposition believed that it was made by an Islamic group in retaliation for having Spanish troops in Iraq.
The first government official to make an open public statement was Juan José Ibarretxe Markuartu, head of government in the Basque Country, two hours after the attacks, . He unequivocally blamed ETA.
In another early public appearance, Interior Minister Acebes pointed in unambiguous terms to ETA, although by the end of the day he said that no line of investigation would be ignored.
Josep-Lluís Carod-Rovira of the Catalan nationalist party, the ERC, who had then recently come under fire for secretly meeting with ETA and advocating dialogue, said he would not communicate with ETA again but someone else should do so to prevent them from committing any more bloodshed.
By the time Aznar and the King had made their public statements in the afternoon, doubts over ETA's involvement were substantial enough that both of them avoided naming a culprit, and they referred just to "terrorists". Aznar insisted on the need to stay the course, echoing his Interior Minister's earlier remarks.
Many people suspected that ETA was being blamed in order to hide any al-Qaeda influence, since that could mean the massacre was in response to the Iraq war. According to the Real Instituto Elcano, this could have resulted in the Aznar government losing the Sunday elections.
