1998 and extradited to Italy, where he died in 2010. While the Atocha murders were the most infamous act during Spain's democratic transition, between 1977 and 1980, far right organizations carried out more than 70 assassinations. Jaime Sartorius, a lawyer who worked on the prosecution at the original trial in 1980, would declare in 2002: "The masterminds are missing. They did not let us investigate. To us, the investigations pointed to the secret services, but only pointed." Legacy On January 11, 2002, the Council of Ministers granted the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Raymond of Peñafort to the four murdered lawyers, with the Cross of the Order given to Ángel Rodríguez Leal. Across Madrid, there are 25 streets and squares dedicated to the victims of the Atocha massacre and many more across Spain. The labor federation CCOO created a foundation to promote the memory of the victims and to advocate for labor and human rights. The Atocha Lawyers Awards were instituted as an annual ceremony in 2002 to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the massacre. Journalist Juancho Dumall, writing in 2017 on the 40th anniversary of the massacre, highlighted that the attack had the opposite effect of what was intended: "It was a terrorist act that marked the future of the country in a way that the murderers would never have suspected and, instead, was the one desired by the victims." The mass peaceful responses and the subsequent liberalizations (legalization of the PCE, worker and union freedoms) are generally credited as allowing the June 1977 elections, Spain's first in 40 years, to occur peacefully. Although many celebrate the success of Spain's transition to democracy, debates over the human cost – especially the Pact of Forgetting (Pacto del olvido) – have grown. That debate was echoed in the words of Atocha massacre survivor Dolores González Ruiz, who died in 2015: "In the course of my life, my dreams broke me." Popular culture The 1979 film Seven Days in January presented an account of the events of the 1977 Atocha massacre. The film won the Golden Prize at 11th Moscow International Film Festival. Gallery See also List of right-wing terrorist attacks List of massacres in Spain Spanish transition to democracy Seven days in January, 1979 film by Juan Antonio Bardem depicting the Atocha massacre References Notes Sources differ on the type of weapons used in the attack; journalists Aníbal