The four-day summit on terrorism in Madrid having ended with the “Madrid Agenda” – the list of conclusions drawn from the summit, which can be summed up by the idea that more democracy will equal less terrorism - today has been a day of busy remembrance in Madrid, following the terrorist attacks of a year ago. At 12 o’clock, the city (and much of Spain and Europe) observed a five-minute silence; there have been memorial services big and small, though the families of many victims have apparently preferred to get out of the city for a few days rather than have to relive it all again. At 7.37 a.m., which is the time the first bomb exploded, Madrid's 650 churches rang their bells for five minutes in memory of the missing. The Bosque de los Ausentes, 192 cypress and olive trees, has been opened in the Retiro Park: a cellist played Pablo Casals’ “Song of the Birds” at the memorial service held there. Candles have been lit, flowers been left, prayers been said and tears shed at the places where the bombs exploded. The press has gone mad, needlessly interviewing people traveling on the same train this morning about how they feel, even thrusting microphones into the faces of children for their opinions. The newspapers all contain special supplements or articles telling us that terrorism is a bad thing, and DVD’s have appeared on the newsstands, their release delayed, perhaps cynically, until the first anniversary was upon us. The state channel, at least ended its evening new bulletin with some dignity, showing the names of the 192 victims scrolling over a black background rather than the supposedly “iconic” images of grief and cheesy music used by the other channels. There was even silence in Congress, where the politicians who have been slinging mud at each other over this for the last few months did the decent thing and shut up for once. The Guardian reports: “Spain's 1m-strong Muslim community yesterday issued what it called the world's first fatwa against Osama bin Laden, leader of al-Qaida which has been linked to the Madrid train bombings […] It requires him to be condemned and al-Qaida banned "as part of Islam.” And this, from Timothy Garton Ash writing in The Observer, is worth reflecting on. “Perhaps the most impressive thing the Spanish people have done in the year since the “11-M” attacks is the thing they haven't done. They have not struck back, scapegoating Moroccans or Muslims of any nationality. A recent report by Human Rights Watch pays this cautious tribute: ‘To our knowledge, there have not been any clearly documented cases of racist violence that can be attributed directly to the March 11 bombings.’ It goes on to quote the president of the association of Moroccan workers and immigrants in Spain: ‘The reaction has overall been exemplary, that of a society that knows how to distinguish between a few terrorists and a community.” That’s the spirit. Still perhaps the most eloquent, sanest testimony on the whole thing has come from Pilar Manjón, who represented the victims at the December investigation into the attacks. Addressing the commission and indirectly the politicians of Spain, she said she wasn’t interested in why the Popular Party had lost the elections. She was interested in why she had lost her 20-year old son. Then she simply asked the politicians to make it possible for Spanish citizens to leave their houses in the mornings safe in the knowledge that they would return there at the end of the day. Her speech in full (in Spanish) is here (PDF).