FUNDACIÓN VÍCTIMAS DEL TERRORISMO 96 - ENGLISH

69 TESTIMONY WHAT MEMORIES DO YOU HAVE OF YOUR CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH? I have very good memories of my child- hood. We were a close family, and I was taught values such as respect for others, good manners, a willingness to make sa- crifices and honesty. The community I grew up in was wonderful too. Perhaps because of all that, I have always been a person with many interests. I loved pla- ying the guitar and mountain sports, es- pecially climbing. I was a very outgoing young man, eager to live and do things, with many plans and hopes ahead of me. WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO JOIN THE CIVIL GUARD? I finished my studies at 18 and, since I had to do compulsory military service, decided to serve as a special volunteer in the Au- xiliary Civil Guard. From the beginning, I intended to pursue a professional career and later join the mountain rescue teams. I was attracted by the possibility of helping people in difficulty, but also by everything the institution represented to me and my understanding of service to others. At 19, I put on the green uniform for the first time and felt I had my whole future ahead of me. My life was full of dreams. FOUR DECADES HAVE PASSED SINCE THE ATTACK. WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT THAT DAY, WHAT COMES TO MIND FIRST? My first memories come as images, like frames from a film: the bus, its interior, the surroundings and everything I ex- perienced then. They are memories that appear as flashbacks . It was an ordinary day. We were at the Civil Guard Traffic School in Madrid, in Calle de Príncipe de Vergara, and had motorcycle practice scheduled. We usua- lly followed a similar route, although we sometimes varied it slightly. From there, we travelled to an Army tra- ining ground to practise on off-road mo- torcycles. That was exactly what we were due to do that day. WHAT WAS THE MOMENT OF THE EXPLOSION LIKE? I was sitting by the aisle on the left-hand side of the bus, between the middle and the rear. I did not perceive the explosion. When I regained consciousness, my whole body was covered in blood. I had temporarily lost sight in my right eye. A piece of metal was embedded in my upper eyelid and another in my lip, with glass and shrapnel all over my body. Those of us who were injured but could still stand got off the bus and took our pistols. We even cham- bered a round because we did not know what had happened or what might await us outsi- de. We went out through the front and, a few seats further forward, found one of our colleagues with the top of his head completely destro- yed. He was the oldest of us: 25, married and expecting his first child. When we realised the scale of the attack, we decided to go back inside. The bus was completely wrecked. There “I built a suit of armour around myself to try to stop anything hurting me” were holes from shrapnel, nuts and bolts that had entered like projectiles. A white cloud covered everything, with the smell of burnt rubber and diesel. We went through it and reached the back of the vehicle. What we saw was terrible: our colleagues’ mutilated bodies, covered in blood. We were pulled out of the bus from behind. We could do nothing for them.