Images of the March 11 bombings that tore through Madrid’s
subways in 2004 brought urban planning graduate student Rachel
Factor to tears. Her Spain, where she lived for over 10 months, was
one of oceans and family dinners at midnight, a far cry from the
blood and desperation that caught the world’s attention a
year ago today.
“I was so upset,” Factor said.
While government leaders originally blamed the Basque separatist
group ETA for the terror that killed nearly 200, investigations
indicate al-Qaeda masterminded it. Spaniards, already strongly
against the U.S. war with Iraq, voted the incumbent party out of
office days after the bombings.
As Spain and the international community mark the attack’s
first anniversary, Factor is remembering it in her own way.
She went to Barcelona and Madrid last year to do field work for
a thesis on transit security, interviewing transportation officials
there.
Those discussions were also documented in a project sponsored by
San Jose State University’s Mineta Transportation Institute
and UCLA’s International Institute on transit security
worldwide. The report is complete, and team members are waiting for
comments from reviewers before publishing it, said Anastasia
Loukaitou-Sideris, chair of urban planning at UCLA and a principal
researcher.
Remembering anti-war protests where hundreds of thousands poured
into Barcelona’s streets, Factor said the March 11 attack was
devastating because the people paid with their lives for a war they
did not want. For her, the study of Spain’s public
transportation is a pursuit both intellectual and deeply
personal.
Findings
Spanish officials knew how ETA operated ““ members of the
group would call beforehand to report when and where explosives
would go off, Loukaitou-Sideris said.
The government got used to that type of threat, mastering
emergency evacuations and thorough searches, she said.
So March 11 came as a devastating surprise.
Factor’s thesis compares Barcelona and Madrid’s rail
systems, examining security and reactions to last year’s
attacks.
She said stations in the capital have started making
announcements about safety to passengers and are hiring more police
and requiring staff to wear reflective vests to increase
visibility.
Factor said she learned in a recent conversation that
Madrid’s transit managers would begin a campaign asking
riders to report suspicious activity, a measure they hesitated to
take because they didn’t want to alarm people.
Barcelona’s response to March 11 offers a sharp contrast,
partly because the bombings did not happen there, Factor said.
“Nothing happened as a reaction,” she said.
Differences in funding ““ Madrid’s systems are much
richer than Barcelona’s ““ could also account for some
of the divergence, she added.
In at least one instance, northern officials outright rejected
methods used in the capital to create a safer environment.
At some Madrid stops, employees have begun choosing individuals
to screen, Factor said. Barcelona executives were concerned the
checks, similar to those conducted at airports, would lead to
racial profiling or other discrimination, she said.
“They said they would never pick random people,” she
said.
Loukaitou-Sideris said conclusions from the wider study mirrored
many of Factor’s findings. Graduate students visited Paris,
Tokyo and other metropolitan areas to conduct interviews.
After Sept. 11, security focus shifted to airports and planes,
leaving a gap with regard to systems like railways,
Loukaitou-Sideris said.
“These transit systems are so open and inherently
vulnerable that they cannot be closed and secured like the
airports,” she said. “We really need to start looking
at other options.”
Researchers will send the Mineta and International
Institute-sponsored study to everyone they interviewed, as well as
leaders in federal transportation agencies.
Factor said that while transit managers have begun meeting
frequently with government and security officials, few decisions
have been made because so little time has passed.
“There were a lot of things they didn’t know,”
she said.
A commonality between Barcelona and Madrid is the balance
between building new stations and funding renovation of the old
ones.
Factor’s research revolves around environmental design,
which focuses on making rail systems inviting and less prone to
terrorism and crime.
Stops with fewer entrances and shorter pathways are easier to
patrol, she said. The tops of ticket machines and other surfaces
should be slanted so packages can’t be left on them. Shadows
should be minimized and lighting enhanced. Screens that broadcast
station activity to passengers would also help.
“It’s going to be super expensive, really
inconvenient and just difficult,” Factor said.
“You’re going to stop a lot of traffic.”
While measures can reduce crime and make people more
comfortable, total prevention is not realistic, she said. As one
official told her, “The truth is that you can’t do
anything.”
A tale of two friends
Jordi Ortega, a Barcelona native, said when he and Factor met on
an intercontinental flight last November, they were “two
people that were in a very different moment in life.”
Factor was on her way home after researching in Spain, and he
was chasing a life and career in California, where he works as a
news producer for Univision Los Angeles.
But their first conversation lasted the entire trip, including
the stopovers. They talked about Factor’s study, and found
that while a world apart in terms of their backgrounds, they had
been touched by the same events.
On March 11, 2004, Ortega was in the United States following the
television interviews and coverage.
“You could tell it was the average person in Spain that
was in the middle of this scene, without knowing why, without being
guilty of anything,” he said.
“I was remembering how people talk, how people behave in
their thinking. Madrid is a city that despite being a capital is so
welcoming. If you ask someone for directions in the street, they
will take you ““ honestly, they will take you to the
place.”
Ortega believes work like Factor’s is vital to policy,
which should be based on fact and not on politicians’
whims.
Both he and Factor said they were disappointed with the Spanish
government’s initial reaction to the attacks and confused by
press claims that ETA was the perpetrator.
“I knew right away,” Factor said. “I just knew
it had nothing to do with ETA. … I knew too much about the
history.”
They both thought about the commuters who used the trains to get
from the outskirts of Madrid to work and school in the city center.
They thought about the university students and the immigrants who
rode the rails.
Ortega said talking to Factor helped him realize what a subway
is: a place where people come together, exposing themselves to
strangers of varied ethnicities and walks of life, sharing a train
with neighbors and travellers from overseas.
“You can really see what your country looks like,”
he said. “It’s much easier to understand.”