The Community of Madrid holds this Thursday the first meeting of the working group of the new tribute space for 11M at the Atocha station, where representatives of the City Council, Renfe, Adif, and associations of victims of terrorism will participate.
The Minister of Housing, Transport and Infrastructure, Jorge Rodrigo, met last July with all the associations of victims of terrorism based in Madrid to inform them of the dismantling of the monument in memory of the victims of 11M, due to the work of expansion of Metro line 11 as it passes through Atocha.
At that meeting, which was also attended by the Commissioner of the Government of the Community of Madrid for care of Victims of Terrorism, Rocío López, it was agreed to create a working group so that the representatives of said associations could present their proposals to this project.
The objective is that the victims feel "represented" with the new space and that they have "timely and detailed" information on the development of the works, sources from the regional Executive have explained. The meeting will take place at the headquarters of the Ministry of Housing, Transport and Infrastructure.
Last August, the General Directorate of Infrastructure, dependent on the Ministry, began the dismantling of the interior part of the monument that housed the collection area.
Following these works at Atocha station, the surface area of the monument in memory of the victims of 11M located in the lobby will quadruple, going from the current 440 square meters to more than 1,200 square meters.
"This is an increase that will contribute to giving it greater projection and visibility, since it is estimated that more than 15 million travelers will transit through the new Atocha station each year," the same sources highlighted.
The monument has two parts, one underground - the collection space - with the names of the victims engraved in laser and the exterior cylinder on the street.
The disassembly will involve two phases. The first, in the interior part, will start in the second half of August and they foresee a month of works, while on the surface the preparatory work will begin to be able to remove the cylinder from October, since a permit from the City of Madrid.
Once it has been dismantled, the next step will be the work on the new Atocha Station Metro lobby, where the new monument will be integrated and which will serve lines 1 and 11. After the extension of the second line from Plaza Elíptica to Conde de Casal expects that the old Estación del Mediodía will double its annual suburban passengers.
This 2024 will commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the 11-M attacks. On March 11, 2004, early in the morning, ten of the thirteen bombs placed by jihadist terrorists exploded in four Madrid Cercanías trains, at the Atocha, Santa Eugenia, El Pozo stations, and next to Téllez Street. , leaving a total of 192 fatalities.
