Omagh inquiry ‘allowing us to close wound that has been open for 26 years’

The sister of a young Spanish woman killed in the Omagh bombing has described a public inquiry into the atrocity as “allowing us to close a wound that has been open for 26 years”.

Rocio Abad Ramos, 23, from Madrid was among 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, who were killed in the dissident republican bomb attack in the Co Tyrone town in 1998.

She had been involved in an exchange trip with young Spanish children to Buncrana in Co Donegal. They had been visiting Omagh on August 15 when the bomb exploded.

Her sister Paloma Abad Ramos gave evidence to the Omagh Bombing Inquiry on Tuesday as it started commemorative hearings focusing on the victims and those affected.

Speaking through a translator, Ms Ramos also told the inquiry she hoped it will uncover the truth of what happened, saying she felt the news in Spain at the time had been “restricted”.

She thanked those behind the inquiry, saying: “This is the only support that we’ve had for many many years”.

Completing her evidence, she said: “I on behalf of my family want to thank you, the inquiry, for this opportunity because you are allowing us to close a wound that has been open for 26 years”.

While Ms Ramos’s evidence was at times emotional, she also recalled how her sister, who had been to Ireland five times, had initially not been impressed with the local food, complaining about seeing butter and peas everywhere.

But she said she grew to enjoy Irish food, even exchanging recipes with those she had befriended in Donegal.

Having travelled from Spain to give evidence at the inquiry at the Strule Arts Centre in Omagh, Ms Ramos said she had thought about how hard it would be to go to Omagh where her sister had died.

But she said in fact it had been difficult to be at the airport because that was the last place she had seen her alive.

Ms Ramos described her sister as someone who was very athletic, who had been a Spanish long jump champion at 18, was also academically clever, winning a scholarship to university.

She said her sister gave her time to help others, including supporting vulnerable people to complete the Camino De Santiago pilgrimage.

She also expressed gratitude for all the letters her family had received from people in Ireland following her sister’s death.

In her statement to the inquiry she said when her parents left her sister at the airport, she was so excited to be going on the trip, and having just finished her studies she had a world of possibilities ahead of her.

“As our parents hugged and said goodbye to Rocio, little did they know that was to be the last time they would see their daughter alive,” the inquiry heard she said in her statement.

Asked about that during the hearing, Ms Ramos said: “I was thinking it would be very, very difficult to walk along the street where the bomb had exploded, well this happened to us at the airport, the airport was the last place we saw Rocio alive.”

Back in August 1998, she arrived home from a holiday to learn what had happened to her sister, and followed her parents to Belfast, on a military plane with the families of other Spanish citizens who lost their lives or were injured.

“Imagine a military plan with no seats, seated on a net with 20 more people, family members of wounded and victims, it was a very tense situation,” she told the inquiry.

She paid tribute to being sheltered from seeing the bomb scene. She also told the inquiry she wanted to thank those who recovered her sister’s remains, describing going to the morgue as a “moment I will never forget in my life”.

They returned to Madrid on a military plane, with two coffins, Rocio’s, as well as that of 12-year-old Fernando Blasco Baselga who was also killed in the bomb.

She described hugging her sister’s coffin on the flight back.

On their return to Madrid, the two coffins were covered with Spanish flags and given a military parade, and later a state funeral which she compared to a Champions League final with crowds of people in attendance, including the King’s daughter.

“I was in shock, just three days before we learned that our sister had been killed in a terrorist bombing in Ireland, it was mind-blowing and we were not able to cope with this,” she said.

“We were directed to (the) funeral parlour, it was like the final of the Champions League because there were so, so many people, our grief was made public … we were not left in peace.”

Ms Ramos summed her sister up as an extrovert, and a “very special person” who had a love of Ireland.

“She had a family here, she loved Irish and the culture and the country,” she added.