Aoife O'Reilly reports on the way that the Spanish capital's Irish population has reacted to the bombings of March 11th.

March is usually the month of shamrocks and tricolours in Madrid, as the city embraces St Patrick's Day with great Celtic spirit. But the appalling events of March 11th have changed everything. Although Madrilenians still joined in the Irish cheer last week there was a deep undercurrent of grief and sadness.

The city's anguish has pierced the hearts of the Irish people who have made Madrid their home. Whether they have lived in the city for decades, years or months, the Irish are mourning alongside their neighbours in the wake of the terrorist attacks that killed 202 people and injured another 1,500.

John Liddy, a poet from Limerick, articulated the stunned reaction of Irish residents in his poem "Another Eleventh In The Library", which he wrote in the hours after the bombings. "Today I went to work / with the weight of death and mutilation / in my shoulder bag - incalculable loss / like sinking stones in my pocket." The poem has been placed among the thousands of candles, messages of condolence and flowers at Atocha Station, one of the three railway stations bombed, where people continue to congregate to pay their respects to the victims of the attacks.

Liddy has lived in Madrid since the early 1980s and feels a strong bond with its people. "Now more than ever I feel really proud to be a part of Madrid and the community of Madrid," he says. His admiration was shared by most of the Irish people who witnessed Madrilenians' solidarity after the massacre, particularly in the rally against terrorism on March 12th.

Liam Liddy, John's brother and fellow poet, endorses the sense of camaraderie. "These days you see strangers looking into each other's eyes with a look of comprehension, shared grief. I feel part of that; I share those feelings."

On March 11th David Mooney, a Dublin-born musician and actor, was woken by the first of the three explosions at Atocha Station. A deadly silence followed the echo of the second and third blasts; then came the howl of sirens. "I never heard a bomb before, but I knew what it was. I went down to the street parallel to Avenida de la Ciudad de Barcelona and it was completely full of police cars and ambulances. It was terrible."

During his 11 years in Madrid Mooney has established himself on the music and acting circuit, playing alongside Spaniards in his Celtic rock band, Thirsty Four, and recently appearing in Te Doy Mis Ojos (Take My Eyes), Icíar Bollaín's acclaimed film about domestic violence.

He says the atmosphere changed on the metro in the days after the attacks. "Nobody talked; there was hardly any noise in the carriages. Even people like myself, who did not lose anybody, had a lump in our throats for days." Like most people who have lived in Madrid for any length of time, he is accustomed to the threat of ETA bombing campaigns. But, in al-Qaeda, March 11th introduced a new threat to Spanish society. "This is totally different," he says. "There is more helplessness in the air."

The Irish Rover, a well-known bar where Mooney played on St Patrick's Day, held a minute's silence for the dead and injured. Brendan Murphy, its manager, says people were numb after the attacks. "There is a certain amount of paranoia now. It has made many people more vigilant and conscious of things like unattended bags in the bar," says Murphy, who is from Mount Merrion, in Dublin, but has lived in Madrid for more than 20 years.

Apprehension hangs over the city: the sound of a siren causes jitters, rubbish bags on street corners trigger alarm, foreigners receive suspicious glances and forgotten bags on trains close down stations.

"I feel we now have two terrorists here: local terrorist and international terrorist," says Frances Earley, an English teacher who has run an Irish shop in the heart of the city for 13 years. The Laois-born woman, who settled in Madrid more than 25 years ago, set up the shop as a hobby to maintain her Irish identity. Earley's little den of Celticness, which stocks everything from Aran jumpers to Claddagh jewellery, stands proudly at the top of the prestigious Calle de José Ortega y Gasset; although the area is miles from the scenes of the atrocities, she no longer feels secure and is reluctant to take the metro. Yet, she says, the attacks have brought her much closer to Madrilenians than she has felt before. "I realise that there is such a thing as solidarity in the city, where everybody worked together," she says.

Despite the shadow that March 11th has cast over the city, Madrid is united against the terrorists and refuses to act like a city under siege. "We are brothers in arms," says Brendan Murphy. "I feel very at one with them. I'm not Spanish and I don't feel Spanish, but in this respect I feel at one with them."

At his Irish-language classes at the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas de Madrid, Pat Donnellan, a Galway man, has watched his students try to deal with the atrocities. It is impossible to assimilate their scale, he says. "It is only when you think of the individual cases and stories that you can begin to comprehend what has happened." But life has to get back to normal, he says. "Terrorism is a fact of life in Madrid. With ETA we have seen bombs and people blown to bits. But life goes on, like in Northern Ireland: we all have a job to do; we all have to clock in."

As co-founders and advisory editors of The Stony Thursday Book, a journal published in Limerick since 1975, the Liddy brothers have retained strong ties with Irish literature. The conflict between nationalism and multiculturalism felt by many expatriates is often played out in John's poetry, the most recent volume of which, Cast-A-Net, Almadraba, was translated into Spanish by Liam.

The brothers say March 11th has swept away feelings of cultural dislocation. They, like most Irish in Madrid, say the bombings have reinforced their desire to live in the city. "The people showed great solidarity and courage after the attack and great maturity in voting the way they did in the election. I feel privileged to be a part of that. More than ever, that makes this city, this country, the place where I want to be," says Liam.