Twenty years ago on March 11, at the height of the morning rush hour, four commuter trains in Madrid, Spain were wracked by ten nearly simultaneous bomb explosions in the most devastating European terror attack since the Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. The blasts wounded over 2,000 people and took a total of 193 lives (the last victim passed away a full ten years later after being in a coma since the attack). In Spain, the catastrophe is known simply by the abbreviated date “11M”, much like “9/11” in America.

In a 90-minute documentary called 11M: Terror in Madrid, now playing on Netflix, survivors and insiders recount not only the horror of that day, but also the political crisis it sparked and the hunt for the perpetrators, who were initially but wrongly assumed to be members of ETA or Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (“Basque Homeland and Liberty”), the Basque separatist movement that killed 829 people (including 340 civilians) and wounded more than 22,000 in terrorist actions between 1968 and 2010.

The film begins with a small group of friends and relatives reminiscing and commiserating over the loss of someone they knew who died in the blasts nearly twenty years before. They are still brought to tears by the memories. Then we are introduced to some of the survivors themselves – among them an electrician, a photojournalist, a cancer researcher, a taxi driver, a dance teacher, a train operator – who had no idea that morning that ordinary life was about to become irrevocably changed. “Up until March 10, 2004, I was a normal person,” says one woman to the camera. “I had a job. I think I was happy.” A man says, “My life was just like any other guy who was 19 or 20.” Another man remembers, “There was nothing that made me feel that day would be different from any other day.” But one elderly woman recalls about her departing son, “As he was walking down the hallway, I had this feeling. I thought, ‘Don’t leave.’”

Then the trains began exploding. The survivors on camera remember loud blasts, darkness, smoke – and “things no one should see,” as one woman recalls, fighting back emotion. The train operator actually saw the second blast in his rear-view mirror. “That image,” he states. “I have it… it’s impossible to forget,” he manages to get out, his eyes wet with tears. Some of the survivors recount realizing that they had lost their legs in the blasts. One woman said there was a boy next to her who was dead. “He was very young.” First responders, who to this day remain traumatized by what they faced, didn’t know where to begin dealing with the magnitude of the calamity.

Authorities immediately launched an investigation. The understandable assumption was that ETA, a constant domestic terror threat in Spain, was behind the bombings, perhaps to impact the country’s general elections only three days away. But ETA was quickly ruled out, and that is when things took a suspicious turn.

The official government line, disseminated by the state-run media, continued to insist that ETA was the culprit, even as the investigation pointed in a different direction – al Qaeda. When the jihadist group published a letter taking credit for the bombings, and ETA itself condemned the attack and disavowed responsibility, this was potentially a politically damaging revelation for Spanish president José Aznar and his Popular Party. Aznar was one of the first and few European leaders to support the war in Iraq, something most Spaniards opposed. Right on the cusp of a national election, he and his administration feared that if the Madrid train bombings could be linked to Spain’s involvement in Iraq, the election was lost.

From there, the film explores the political ramifications of the Madrid bombings, the details behind the preparation and execution of the coordinated attacks, and the subsequent trial of those involved. 11M is instructive for its insight into the political maneuvering and power plays of a government that lied to its own people in the wake of the worst terror attack in Spanish history. It is also compelling in its explanation of the growth of an al Qaeda presence in Spain, its connection to the 9/11 attacks, and the official narrative to downplay the extent of al Qaeda’s international network.

More importantly, the film is a reminder that terrorism is asymmetric warfare waged intentionally on innocents, not conventional war in which non-combatants are merely the tragic collateral of attacks against military targets. It is a reminder that it is too easy for statistics like “193 dead and 2,000 injured” to turn victims into numbers and to distance us from the human cost of evil. The higher the numbers, the more incomprehensible and impersonal that cost becomes. “The death of one man is a tragedy,” Stalin reportedly observed. “The death of millions is a statistic.”

11M is a disturbing testament to the reality that behind every one of those 193 deaths and 2,000+ casualties in Madrid was and is an individual whose life was cut short, ruined, or in some way altered forever, and that each one of those individual tragedies rippled outward to wound the lives of innumerable friends and relatives of the victims. The same is true for the nearly 1200 innocents killed and more than 3400 wounded in the Hamas butchery in Israel on October 7, 2023, or the nearly 3,000 killed and many thousands injured in the 9/11 terrorism, or the victims of any other cowardly terrorist action. The impact of such bottomless evil extends far beyond the quantifiable into incalculable misery and trauma – as it is intended to.

When we are reminded, as in this film, that these abstract numbers represent flesh-and-blood, individual fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, friends and neighbors, and that each one of those sits at the center of his or her own small community of relatives and friends, our common humanity surges to the surface, and we feel the call to stand with them, or for them, against the architects of evil.

Some of the survivors and first responders interviewed in the film recall, for example, how amazed and grateful they were to the many “ordinary” citizens who instinctively rose to the occasion in the moment: helping the wounded, comforting the dying, and assisting in the search through the wreckage.

And the very night of the Madrid bombings, the Barcelona professional soccer team played against the Scottish team Celtic in Glasgow. In a touching gesture of solidarity, the stadium full of Celtic fans paid tribute to and offered genuinely emotional condolences to their Spanish counterparts during what was meant to be a minute of silence by uniting to sing, “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” Terrorism is meant to divide and, well, terrorize, but it also can unite and rouse our courage and determination.

11M is a well-told documentary, well worth watching as a real-life political conspiracy, a terrorism investigation, and a human drama. It reminds us that we cannot afford to let those who would exacerbate and exploit our political and social divisions win by destroying our common humanity.

Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior