11M, the wound of Madrid

Ten years has gone since the terrorist attacks on four trains in Madrid commuter’s network carried out by a cell of jihadist terrorists, as revealed by the police and judicial investigation. It was the second major attack in Europe up to date, with 10 near-simultaneous explosions on four trains during rush hour in the morning (between 07:36 and 07:40) and it left 191 people died and 1858 injured.

Ten years has gone and none of us, the people who live in Madrid and its suburbs, and surely in Spain, can clearly recall what we were doing exactly when the bombs exploded and all day long. Besides crying and feeling impotent, we all woke up and realized that international terrorism was also our  concern. 11-M is our painful wound, as surely September 11 is New York's wound.

Would 11-M have been different in terms of security with social media?

The answer is undoubtedly yes.

As @LuisSerranoR says in this video post (in Spanish), information would have started with a post in Twitter, so the commuters who travelled in the trains (and all the population) would have known what was going on and they would probably have the option to leave the trains before they exploded, taken into consideration that authorities could have been capable of sending updated information using Social Media.

Maybe that would have not been necessary, since authorities would have stopped the trains themselves, for security reasons. Let's remember that all communications failed, except SMS, so it was extremely difficult to know what was happening. 

Social media would have worked as a warning alert system. Not with the first explosion but probably with some of the following. Surely information would have flown much easier and it is always an empowering instrument, since it enables people to take the right decisions and diminishes uncertainty.

11M is our wound and we will never forget the victims and their families. Let’s them rest in peace and let’s hope there will never ever happen anything like that again, nowhere.