The Forest of Remembrance (Spanish: Bosque del Recuerdo), formerly known as the Forest of the Departed (Bosque de los Ausentes), is a memorial garden located in the park of El Retiro in Madrid, Spain that commemorates the 191 civilian victims of the 2004 Madrid train bombings and the special forces agent who died in the attacks on 11 March 2004. The seven suicide bombers subsequently killed themselves on 3 April 2004 while under siege by security forces in their apartment block.
The new name, Bosque del Recuerdo (Forest of Remembrance), was chosen after the survivors and the victims' families argued that those killed are for ever present and have never departed from their hearts.
The memorial comprises 192 olive trees and cypresses, one for each person killed, and is surrounded by a channel of water intended to symbolise life. The location is a hillock near the Atocha railway station, one of the sites of the atrocities.
Read more about Forest Of Remembrance: Inauguration
Famous quotes containing the words forest of, forest and/or remembrance:
“Now it is time to call attention
to our bed, a forest of skin
where seeds burst like bullets.
We are in our room. We are in
a shoe box. We are in a blood box.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“All nature is a temple where the alive
Pillars breathe often a tremor of mixed words;
Man wanders in a forest of accords
That peer familiarly from each ogive.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“To be a surrealist ... means barring from your mind all remembrance of what you have seen, and being always on the lookout for what has never been.”
—René Magritte (1898–1967)