LiberPress Catalonia Award 2013

The memory is still with us: on 24 July 2013, an AVE train travelling to Santiago de Compostela reached the Angrois district travelling at excessive speed and, because of serious negligence, came off the rails and crashed. 74 people died in the accident and more than 150 were injured. As soon as they realised there had been an accident, the residents of the town, showing great heroism and solidarity, rushed to help the victims.

On television we were able to see neighbours breaking through fences to help the injured, bringing blankets and water, helping the injured, trying to free passengers from the wreckage.

They have always said that it was a normal, spontaneous reaction, that they did what was needed and that they didn’t deserve any praise, but we cannot and would not want to forget, or fail to thank them for their exemplary help, so full of courage and solidarity.

“There are a lot of elderly people in the small town of Angrois. When someone stumbles and falls to the ground, we run to help them up. It’s a spontaneous, human reaction. That’s what we did the night of July 24th. We don’t think, we act. Exhausted, without eating, without sleeping, from eight in the morning until we couldn’t carry on, we answered questions from hundreds of reporters: Where were you? What did you do? What did you think? What did you see?”