Spain: For a country which sets great store by the rituals and ceremonies of death, funerals and memorials, the events in Madrid yesterday were remarkably cold, unemotional and were carried out in almost total silence.
The morning began early with the bells of 650 Madrid churches chiming at 7.37am. It was the time exactly one year ago when the first of a chain of 10 bombs exploded on four crowded commuter trains. In only four minutes, less than it took those Madrid church bells to end their solemn tolling, 191 people had died and another 1,600 were seriously injured.
The scene just before 7.30am yesterday at Atocha station, where the first of the bombs exploded, was much like any other morning rush hour as thousands went to their work.
But as the church bells began their tolling, the mood changed. Madrid mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon joined police, firemen and first-aid workers, who one year ago worked tirelessly to rescue survivors from the wreckage of the trains. It was a scene repeated at the two other stations where al-Qaeda bombs exploded.
The crowded stations went quiet for five minutes as the officials, visitors, passengers and commuters stood still to remember the victims. Some people, whose trains were merely passing through Atocha, got off to pay their respects before joining the next train, even if it meant arriving slightly late at the office.
As happened one year ago, impromptu shrines with candles, flowers, photographs and poems were left where passengers died.
Many were weeping while others were simply quiet and solemn. As one women left a small bunch of flowers, she said she had lost her daughter in the tragedy and wanted to be on the spot where she died one year ago.
The only official ceremony marking the day was a brief event in the Retiro park, where King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia inaugurated a garden of remembrance, which has been named the Wood of the Absent Ones. The cold, formal ceremony contrasted starkly with the bright warm sunshine of the first spring-like day of the year, when the trees were coming to life and the sticky buds on horse chestnut trees were beginning to swell.
Only members of the government and a few dozen invited guests - none of them victims or their families - attended the ceremony. After five minutes the king and queen stepped forward and placed a wreath of white flowers on a stand in front of the green terraced mound planted with 192 cypress and olive trees - one for each train victim and one for a police officer killed three weeks later - surrounded by a shallow moat.
There were no addresses and no speeches, and the ceremony ended with a short haunting cello solo played by Blanca Coines, with a Catalan hymn, El Cant dels Ocells (Song of the Birds), written by cellist Pablo Casals.
After briefly greeting King Mohamed VI of Morocco who had come specially to pay his tribute to what he described as "the dignity and courage" of the Spanish people after such a tragedy, and other visiting dignitaries - including Afghan president Hamid Karzai, UN secretary general Kofi Annan and Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflike - the king and queen left.
In less than 15 minutes the ceremony was over.
The victims of 11M, as Spaniards know the atrocity, asked that the day be solemn and dignified. Most of their wishes were respected. Pilar Majon, the feisty president of the 11M Victims' Association, said she would prefer not to hear the church bells. "We would like to have a day of silence," she said.
For the first time in a year, the offices of the 11M Victims' Association were closed, and the only sign marking the building were 192 black ribbons hanging on the door.
A five-minute silence at noon was respected across the country. Trains, buses, even underground trains and cars came to a standstill.
Outside the parliament, hospitals, schools, offices and public buildings, tens of thousands of workers left their desks to stand in the streets to remember.
Perhaps one of the the most moving moments took place outside the Audiencia Nacional, the high court. There, Judge Juan del Olmo, the investigating magistrate who began his work to identify the terrorists and their accomplices only hours after the bomb blast, stood on the steps of the building with his arm around a weeping Olga Sanchez, the M11 prosecutor who has worked alongside him.
She was in charge of the gruesome task of identifying the dead on March 11th last year, and of sifting through plastic bags containing remains and body parts.