Following the joint attack by the United States and Israel on Iran, hundreds of Spaniards are trapped in nearby countries, after Iran, in retaliation, bombed Israel and six US bases in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait with missiles and drones.
Iranian retaliation has caused several tourist complexes to be affected in Dubai, the airport has been bombed and one person has died. Ana Pérez, an aeronautical engineer from Marbella who works at the airport, has told Onda Cero exclusively weekend news that she is “shocked” after the attack on the place where she goes to work every day. “It has an impact, because you hear the bomb and you know that they have intercepted a missile. You see them,” he described. Even so, the situation is strangely calm,” he noted, because “everything is open, they have brought me food from the supermarket.”
We were a little scared
He has also told his testimony in radio stadium the padel player Javier Garrido. He had planned to fly yesterday to participate in the Gijón tournament, but he couldn’t. “We are watching to see what happens,” he explained, while indicating that he has not contacted the Embassy because he has been informed through the information that has been disseminated on social networks.
At the time of the bombings he was at home with his girlfriend and they began to hear “I don’t know if bombs, explosions, missiles… We had no idea what was happening. We were a little scared,” he confessed. They went out to the terrace and saw four columns of smoke and a few hours later they received a warning message on their cell phones “that stopped my heart.”
“Tense calm” and “apparent normality” in Dubai
In that message they were warned that the noises were coming from the fact that they were intercepting missiles. That’s why they made the decision to go down to the building’s parking lot, although they later went up to the house because everything seemed calmer. Right now, the situation is relatively normal. “It strikes me that people are calm, the children at the dispatches, there are delivery people…”.
That same feeling of “tense calm” is what Blanca has reported, also in Radio stadium. She is a teacher and has lived there for nine years. Like Javier, he remembered the moment of the warning message and how they were told to stay away from the glass. “What do I do, do I go into the bathroom?” he commented, laughing, since the buildings there are ‘full glass’. “I don’t have a place to sleep that is not surrounded by glass,” he stressed.
Despite everything, she has acknowledged feeling “privileged” because other people have come to ask about shelters, since they come from countries at war. “Dubai is a city that is not prepared for this because it has never reached this point,” he explained. Classes are suspended until Wednesday and, although there are people in the streets, “I think normality is more apparent than real.”
Trinidad and Gregorio were on the beach when they heard the explosions
Trinidad and Gregorio are two teachers from Marbella who are on vacation in Doha. At the time of the attacks they were on a beach. They began to receive ES-Alert messages in Arabic and thanks to translation systems they understood what they were saying: “They recommended that we leave open spaces and take refuge in closed spaces,” so they went to the hotel, where they were asked to remain “calm.”
At the moment they do not know when they will be able to return, but “the situation at this moment is calm. From time to time sirens and some explosions are heard again, but the atmosphere inside the hotel seems normal,” he said.
30 tourists trapped in Doha
In Doha (Qatar) there are currently 30 Spanish tourists trapped. Grego and Juan are part of this expedition that should have taken a flight back to Spain, but which was canceled after the attacks. “We had the flight at 2:45 p.m., and at approximately 1:30 p.m. all the operators began to come out and say that all flights were cancelled,” Grego told EFE.
Since they didn’t know “very well what to do,” they stayed at the airport for an hour “in case there were flights,” but they were told “no, that was impossible.” During the following hours they began to meet other Spaniards in the same situation. They have described the situation as “tremendous chaos”, because to leave the airport they had to wait three hours in line. “We were stuck with thousands of people; then they put us on buses,” he said.
Additionally, they told airport staff that they were all part of the same family so they could go on the same bus together. Thanks to this, they are “calmer”, although they spent the night “very nervous” because from time to time they heard explosions. At the moment, he has assured that they have “no idea” when they will be able to leave.
The junior teams of Real Madrid and Velncia basketball are in Abu Dhabi
In Abu Dhabi (capital of the United Arab Emirates) are the junior basketball teams of Real Madrid and Valencia, who had traveled there to participate in the Next Generation tournament. As sources from the competition have informed EFE, both teams are fine and confined in the same hotel, waiting for the airspace to reopen.
The Euroleague, organizer of the event, has communicated on its social networks the definitive cancellation of the competition. “It is the most responsible measure at this time,” they stated in the message spread through X, while explaining that the decision has been made “to guarantee the safety of all participants.”
