Barry and I went to Atocha early this afternoon, to see what the station looked like, but also to see the memorial to the March 11, 2004 Madrid train bombings which killed 191 people and injured some 1800.
Especially considering the circumstances of its origin, it is, as Barry said, the least chauvinistic monument imaginable. Texts composed of hundreds of expressions of grief sent in the days after the attack from all over the world are printed on a clear colourless membrane that is inflated by air pressure, rising balloon-like inside a cylinder. That structure is composed of glass blocks and sits on a platform or terrace overhead. The light in the empty blue room below comes from this source alone. At night the cylinder is illuminated by lamps within its base and can be seen throughout the station neighborhood.