Injured Spaniards in Brussels attacks rise to nine

“It does not appear there is any imminent risk [to their lives] or, at least, they haven't told us so,” García-Margallo admits, but says Belgian medical services are being 'very cautious' about giving out information.

He adds that the ministry is 'making an enormous effort' to trace Spaniards whose relatives and friends say are in Brussels, but whom they have not heard from.

Most of the relatives of the known injured Spanish citizens have been informed, although they are having some difficulty getting to the Belgian capital to be with them as flights from Spain have been suspended – although Irish low-cost carrier is still running connections to Charleroi airport.

Zaventem airport on the edge of Brussels, where 11 people have been killed in a double suicide bombing at the American Airlines departure gates, has closed altogether and no flights have been running since the attack – planes to and from Zaventem have been grounded today (Thursday), and it is not known whether any will fly over Easter.

And train services linking Brussels to other parts of Belgium and abroad, and the city metro system, have nearly all been cancelled following the deaths of 20 people in the terrorist blast at Maalbeek station just a few hundred metres from the European Union Parliament building.

Four of the injured Spaniards have since been discharged from hospital.

The total of nine include Austria Antonia Dubal Sierra and her young son, identified only by his initials of K. L. Dubal; Almería student Cristina da Silva Molina, 25, who is in Brussels carrying out work experience as part of her master's degree course; Marta Montes Astudillo; and 45-year-old María Gloria Arana from Miranda de Ebro in Catalunya, whose mother Gloria Sáez Tobía – a well-known poet and painter in the area – contacted reporters to give her identity.

Gloria Sáez says her daughter uses the metro daily to get to her workplace within the EU offices, and reveals María Gloria has only suffered minor injuries – mainly cuts to her face and reversible hearing damage caused by the noise of the blast – and is likely to be discharged later today and to return to her home in Brussels.

The injured Catalunya woman managed to get out of the metro station and onto the street after the bombing, and then dropped onto the pavement, where she sat in a dazed and disconcerted state for some time before calling a female friend to come and get her.

María Gloria's mother says her family kept her in the dark about her daughter being in hospital 'so as not to worry her', saying they could not get hold of the injured woman because of mobile phone coverage having shut down in the Belgian capital.