News, March 2004

Evangelical doctor recalls those dreadful hours in Madrid

MADRID, 16-03-1004 (ACPress.net). Pedro Tarquis, Director of A.C.Press and medical practitioner at Clinico Hospital in Madrid, watched and worked as the trickle of victims being brought in from the Spanish capital's worst-ever terrorist attack became a flood. This is his personal recollection of March 11th, 2004, a day which will be etched onto the memories of Spaniards for many years to come.

'Today, March 11th, 2004, in my work as a doctor in a central Madrid hospital, I have lived and moved among some of the deepest expressions of humanity, both negative and positive. At half-past-eight in the morning, the injured started to arrive, dozens coming from the attacks on various trains in the Spanish capital.

Ten, twenty, thirty, thirty-five...finally over seventy. Seven of them in critical condition, one of them dying soon after arriving. News continued to come in: more than a thousand injured, spread all over Madrid. Almost 200 dead. The worst massacre in Spain since the Civil War. Anxiety, suffering, terror, relatives searching at the hospitals without daring to go to the morgue despite the names of their loved ones not appearing anywhere else. Friends and acquaintances ringing me with an inevitable shake in the voice: 'You wouldn't happen to know about...?'

More than 12 hours facing fear and death, but also the selfless giving by everyone who had something to give. Workers who stayed on after an all-night shift, professionals who gave up their day off to lend a hand, or kept going after they were due to clock off. An avalanche of blood donors far in excess of what was needed or space could accommodate.

Then came the politicians: Ministers, top civil servants, Presidents and General Secretaries. Visiting the injured. Hearing someone say: 'I was next to the bomb, but I've only got a small knock. In my carriage everybody else died. I've been born again.' Strange. Some have been born again, and we have all died a little with those 200 bodies which, until a few hours ago, were laughing and dreaming, and which could be any of us.

Perhaps if we kept up this spirit of generosity which recalls the image of God in which we are made, we would put an end to hate and violence between men. But until such a time comes, and it will never come on this Earth, we have lived through a small outbreak of love in our daily routine. It is much easier to give the whole of our lives one day, than to give our all every day. This won't change the world, but it will make a difference in our immedaite environment. And above all, it will mean that the world does not change us.

Loving, when all's said and done, is dying a little, or a lot, so that others may live. If you don't believe it, ask the man from Galilee who was born in Bethlehem and died on the cross at Jerusalem...and rose again 3 days later.'

Source & Editing: ACPress.net