On Sept. 11, 2001 at 8:46 am, the history of the contemporary world changed. 

When American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, the entire planet stopped.

The attacks of 9/11 are not only the bloodiest the United States has suffered on its own soil in its history — close to 3,000 people died — but they also unleashed a war and occupation that lasted 20 years and became the closest thing to a global tragedy.

The generations born and raised in the first half of the 20th century had two world wars, the atomic bomb, the Cold War and the Vietnam War as references to understand the destructive power of human beings.

On the other hand, for those who were born in the last decades of the 20th century, the world wars, Vietnam and its alter ego in counterculture, only exist in books, music or movies. 

They may have a closer reference with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the end of socialism and with this, as historians describe, the end of the 20th century.

But they themselves lived in the front row and without being invited to the moment that began in the 21st century in an unimaginable and painful way. Billions of people saw, live, for the first time, how thousands of people died, and how the symbol of power of the American empire fell.

However, there is already a new generation that did not experience the attacks or was too young to remember them. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, 93% of people over 30 say they remember where they were or what they were doing when they heard the news of the September 11 attacks, but this figure plummets to 42% when 25-year-olds are asked.

Despite this, 9/11 continues to have the character of a global tragedy, which is why today, 20 years after the fall of the Twin Towers, wars continue to be fought, movies are still being made, books are still being written and the attacks have had an effect not only on global geopolitics, but also on the lives and culture we all live in the 21st century.

At AL DÍA, we're looking in the rear-view mirror to see how our lives have changed in these 20 years, what are the things we had two decades ago that today are no longer part of our daily lives? 

Who were we, where were we,  and what do we remember from that day? But also who are we today as a globalized society, and as a Western culture?