Spain’s royals console mourners at funeral

? King Carlos and Queen Sofia went row by row on Wednesday, clasping the hands of the bereaved or kissing them on the cheeks at an emotional state funeral for the 190 people killed in Spain’s worst terrorist attack.

The Spanish monarch and his family joined Secretary of State Colin Powell, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Prince Charles, French President Jacques Chirac and more than a dozen other heads of state or government in the 19th-century Almudena Cathedral.

“We have cried, and we have cried together,” Cardinal Antonio Rouco Varela, clad in purple vestments, told the congregation of about 1,500.

The March 11 attacks traumatized Spain so deeply the government took the extraordinary step of holding a state funeral for people outside the royal family.

The royal family sat up front during the Mass, with the Spanish government and other politicians immediately behind, including Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and his successor, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

“Great pain has filled your lives and those of your families since that black day in which brutal terrorist violence, planned and executed with unspeakable cruelty, ended the lives of your most beloved,” Rouco Varela said.

“From the very first moment — that of the anguished search and the inevitable identification of your loved ones — your pain became the pain of our dear city of Madrid, of Spain, and very quickly, of the whole world.”

Before the Mass, a man in the congregation shouted, “Mr. Aznar, I hold you responsible for the death of my son!”

Many Spaniards have accused Aznar of provoking the bombings by supporting the U.S.-led war in Iraq, and his party lost national elections three days after the attacks to Zapatero’s Socialists.

Spain's Queen Sofia consoles a family mamber of one of the train bomb victims at Almudena Cathedral in Madrid. At left is King Juan Carlos. A state funeral for the bombing victims was Wednesday.

Zapatero has pledged to withdraw the estimated 1,300 Spanish troops serving in Iraq unless the United Nations takes control of the operations. The daily El Pais reported he intends to increase Spain’s 125 troops in Afghanistan to offset criticism of a withdrawal from Iraq.

Queen Sofia wiped away tears and the king held a handkerchief to his face during Wednesday’s service. At one point a middle-aged woman clutching a picture of a young man curtsied before the queen, kissed her hand and wept.

As the Mass ended, members of the royal family went from row to row in the cathedral, consoling relatives of the dead.

Neither Aznar nor anyone in his government approached grieving relatives.

Spaniards have suffered from terrorism before — Basque separatists have launched attacks for decades, with the highest death toll being 21 in 1987.

But the March 11 attacks, in which Islamic extremists are the prime suspects, have dwarfed that figure. Besides the dead, more than 1,800 were wounded when 10 bombs ripped through four commuter trains during the morning rush hour.