February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Denise Gilroy was among the 1,500 people injured in the blasts that ripped through four commuter trains in the Spanish capital.
The 52-year-old, who suffered broken ribs and some internal injuries in one of 10 explosions claimed by an Islamic terrorist group, said she was lucky to leave the “train of death” alive.
“At first I didn’t realize that it was bomb,” said Gilroy, who was released from Madrid’s Gregorio Maranon Hospital Monday. “I was sitting and all of a sudden I heard `bang’ and I said, `Oh my God, it’s a bomb.’ I think for a few minutes I may not have been conscious of what was going on around me.
“When I looked at the girl sitting in front of me, she had been listening to her walkman, I realized she had been very, very badly injured. And then I turned over and saw a man crawling along the aisle. All I could see around me were bodies because out of that carriage very, very few people came out. I believe that is the carriage that they had the bomb in.
“Thank goodness I have been one of the lucky ones but because I’ve been one of the lucky ones I also remember the poor people who left their lives on those trains.”
Gilroy moved to Spain from Belfast 20 years ago, said she was most upset at the carnage among students, but noted that it would likely have been worse had the university not been closed.
Boys and girls, 15, 16, I saw them getting on the train yesterday, listening to their Walkmans, listening to their music, laughing, talking,” she said. “Seeing also the people going to their work, getting on happily in the morning, reading their newspaper, but not thinking it was the train of death.
“Those people, I think about their families . . . shattered families and my heart really goes out to them. I was one of the lucky ones. I won’t forget it for a long time. My heart is really with those people. I feel very, very deeply about them.”
Gilroy’s family flew out from Belfast to see her in the hospital. Her sister Eugena Porter, from Ballinderry, Co. Antrim, said they were concerned about the emotional impact on her.
“When we saw the footage on television, we thought it was not Denise,” she said. “We were concerned that mentally she seems very dull and she was emotionally hit by it all.”
A memorial service for the Spanish victims was held Sunday in Omagh, where two natives of Madrid — a schoolboy and a youth worker — were among the 29 people killed by the 1998 Real IRA bomb.
“We know what they’re going through,” said Michael Gallagher, who lost his son in the Omagh bombing. “There may be many miles between us, but we’re only just a bit further down the same road.”