Madrid, Atoća train station, March 11, 2004... Julijan Calero, then a 33-year-old coach in the junior categories of Athletics, and a local policeman and his partner Julija stopped police motorcycles in front of a restaurant not far from the station.
The two planned to have breakfast there. However, they did not even open the door of the restaurant when they heard a call on the radio that an explosion had occurred in Atoća. After only two minutes, they reached the train station, where they were greeted by a gruesome sight.
That March 11, marked in Spain as 11M, was the saddest day in the modern history of Madrid and Spain - 193 people were killed in the terrorist attacks on the station, while around 1.800 were injured.
Twenty years later, Calero is the coach of Cartagena, a team from Segunda, Spain. Through his career, he has reached the position of assistant coach in the Spanish national team at the 2018 World Cup in Russia, as well as the coaching staff of Porto, and he will soon publish a book in which he also recalled the horrors. from Atoća.
"What I experienced changed my life - it's a burden I will have to deal with as long as I live. Nothing was the same anymore - not in travel, not work, not life... You go on living, but there is always a memory - 11M", shouted Kalero for "Marka".
He says that because of everything he saw and survived that day, he had many therapeutic conversations with his wife.
"Still on the way to the station we saw dark clouds of smoke. When they got inside, people were walking from one side to the other, disoriented, with black faces, many of them were bloody, they looked like zombies... We were entering a zone of horror and were we are aware of that," says Kalero.
In one of the wagons that exploded, the world came crashing down on Kaler...
"There were too many lifeless bodies around us, many seriously injured, blood, smoke... At the moment when we were rescuing a pregnant woman, we were told to run because there might be another bomb. We managed to get it out somehow - unfortunately, a few days later we heard that she didn't survive".
That day, he didn't just play the role of a policeman.
"A few of us were sent to the nearby sports center to help the medical workers. We carried the wounded, bandaged them, gave medicine... At one point I saw the son of our friends that he was alive, and the face and hug of his mother when she found him will never be forgotten forget".
He will not forget the first day after he returned to football after the tragedy.
"Two days later we played, and already after 15 minutes we scored a goal - all my players ran to celebrate it in a hug with me," said Calero, who was given new life by that hug.
Although even 20 years later, he does not forget the horrors of 11M.
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