As I write, I hear helicopters flying low. Here the bombs don’t explode, they empty the neighbors’ garages who have the desire not to find a corpse inside. We are currently having a lunch at my friend’s mother’s Covisa bar, which has already reopened, and the band from my town is preparing a concert where they will sing the regional anthem. My house is on the fourth floor and no one who lives there was on the street this damn October 29, 2024. For this reason, this story that I have experienced in recent days is, surely, much less painful than that of anyone who lost to a loved one swallowed up by the flood. That night I don’t remember sleeping.
The flood carries away a multitude of cars
Testimony from one of the people affected by DANA
Nervous in my room in a town in the Basque Country, where I work as an ABC delegate, I couldn’t help but look at the photo that Guille had sent to the WhatsApp group, with a “brown and black” current that reached above his knee while waiting for his sister at the door. “It’s really crazy… My grandmother almost doesn’t say it, her house is destroyed.” “Guys I’m fine, if anyone needs help let them know.” For them, a few hours of real survival had begun. Jaume saved his father from death trapped in his garage. The television channels had stopped broadcasting at dawn. All the calls were for help and Apunt journalists worked hard to amplify them, in the hope that someone could help these people.
The next day, I had an interview with a former BBVA executive. I was like an automaton. In my head, I only saw and heard the cries of my people, of my neighbors, of my submerged city. I had just seen my land disappear and I didn’t know if many of my friends could be buried under a mass of carsdebris and mud which, in this area of Lower Ribera, only stopped when arriving at the rice fields. Fortunately, they had no water a few days before starting the “perelloná” (time in the crop cycle during which they are flooded). Otherwise, perhaps the radius of the tsunami, which devastated dozens and dozens of municipalities in Valencia, would have reached other towns like Saler, where my father, my two nephews, their mother and hundreds of citizens currently reside in low houses and campsites.
I booked a plane ticket – without being able to imagine the magnitude of what had happened six hundred kilometers away – and, before going to the airport, I bought a second-hand shovel, masks, gloves, instant soup packets, water bottles and I put it all in a backpack with some old clothes. In another, I kept my work computer and cell phone. I took off from Loiu airport and landed in Manises. I hesitated to get into a taxi and told the driver to drive as close to my house as possible. The taxi driver told me he was looking forward to not having to take anyone there. It was my fucking town.
I went down to the San Marcelino neighborhood, where I played football seven years ago. A memory erased by the real image before my glassy eyes. I walked among streams of people who seemed on pilgrimage. The mud sucked my sneakers and I took a little detour to reach my gatebecause at the end of the street there was a mountain of cars crowded together. I avoided iron, broken furniture, branches and glass. Everything was a brown blanket of death. My memory buried in the mud. I left my things at home, where I briefly discussed the severity of the disaster with Sergio, who has been renting there since I moved to Madrid to study. Then I went down to Iván’s house, in the second grade, with whom I had gone to school since the age of three and who, two nights ago, had just saved a woman by breaking a garage blind with his hands. .
He was angry at what had just happened, but he knew there was no choice but to move forward. The next day Andrea, his girlfriend, needed help cleaning one of her downstairs rooms and off we went. It was the first time that I saw the Legion removing debris and the members of the GEAS (Special Submarine Group of the Civil Guard) entering the basements in search of bodies, dead or alive. When I finished, I went to see How did some friends of the gang behave, who had seen their homes destroyed?. That day, Sion blew out the candles while smiling in front of her.
They sing “Happy Birthday” to Sion, one of the people affected by DANA
We said goodbye and I went for a walk with Joe, who had disappeared from the networks hours and hours after the tragedy and who was already working in what was our school, Blasco Ibáñez, transformed into a logistics center for the collecting and shipping supplies (his operation subsequently surprised even army officers). “When will everything go back to normal?” he asked me. I didn’t know what to answer. We walked along the Camí Nou, the main avenue that connects Benetúser to Massanassa, a town that took longer to receive aid than mine, as did Catarroja. We arrived at Nacho’s house. His garage door ended up bursting under the blows and he had been cleaning the basement on his street for days. After a few minutes of talking, and eating a mackerel sandwich that Joe had prepared for me and which I couldn’t swallow, a dark, tired man appeared.
-Can you help me?
-Yeah.
Paralyzed by panic
We entered his house, which had two floors. In the one below there were two inches of dense brown goo and the man insisted on keeping the furniture. (something Caso’s sister had planned at another time, when she saw his artwork full of mold)which were still in place, with all the photos on them. We had help from three other children and two girls our age. Some of us filled the buckets with what we had and the others emptied them into the street, which looked like an ice rink of the same color, softened and puddled. I wondered why this person was not cooperating, when an older woman, who must have been his mother, kept offering us more containers from the floor above. Then I realized I was paralyzed by panic.
Since then, I have joined Blasco Ibáñez for several days. I slept little and the only dream I remember is a nightmare. I would stay up late, dizzy, gagging at everything around me, and wake up early to start distributing medical supplies again. I had coffee and several cigarettes for breakfast and took the bike I had left at the door, as well as après-ski boots so as not to stain the inside of my house. I began to think that I should take advantage of cycling trips to report and document what I saw, being able to perceive the reality of a larger area. I first contacted Pau and my former youth coach, Óscar, both from Paiporta. They live in an area where they found dozens of dead people among mountains of stinking garbage. Then with Loreto, whom I met during one of the expeditions to Catarroja and who asked me for help for his mother. People I had known personally and who had also experienced this situation could not lie to me and I decided to include what they told me in the brief columns I publish.
I also sent any points of interest I saw to the WhatsApp group shared with my ABC colleagues directly involved in the coverage. I still can’t understand how Valencian José Ramón Navarro-Pareja managed to arrive by car from the capital and walk alone one day after the disaster. To this day, he is still in his country. I saw Pablo Lodeiro, Angie Calero, Helena Cortés and Jaime García trying to console someone who had just lost everything on the sidewalks of my city. Lodeiro told me the scene around us looked like a nightmare and García gave me the idea that later allowed me to get out of it. My despair only grew. Every time I set foot in the mud, I entered the chapter of a horror story. It was only when I typed the first sentences of this text (the most difficult and also the most sincere and simple that I have ever written) that the bubble was broken, I was able to come out of the shock and I started crying cathartically. without consolation.
It will rain again and be fertile
Since then, I have found hunger and sleep again, I half-watched “Men in Black I”, I listened to Vetusta Morla’s June 23 and I understood that Valencia is a fertile land and that every shot of fraternity will make him find his spark and his color. Two typical elements of happy, enthusiastic and daring people like those of Valencia who will soon throw himself into the water, cultivate the earth and jump over the fire without fear.
His heroic response in the midst of chaos and destruction also demonstrates that human beings organize and learn to survive. What other explanation can we explain why the tragedy that Valencia is still going through makes the number of deaths a miracle? That’s the only logical answer that comes to mind when I think about how many people fled to higher ground when the current began to quicken beneath their feet and how many of us began to wear masks and gloves, when our old neighborhoods have become unsanitary and dangerous areas. . None of these measures were implemented under state leadership. Something that would have reduced the number of deaths and minutes of suffering for entire communities.
Beyond the lack of foresight and political inaction, I believe that excessive bureaucracy has led to errors in decision-making. Furthermore, a lack of leadership and an excess of political tactics prevented us from acting quickly. All this results in the absence of the necessary single command to solve the diabolical logistical problem that persists in our streets, and where I have heard veteran and disoriented soldiers compare us to the earthquake in Haiti.
However, today when you walk through Benetúser with a shovel in hand, the town I grew up in that you probably haven’t heard of Until a few days ago, I met and lived with the forest guards of Segovia who removed debris, the Basque and Catalan police officers who patrolled, the firefighters of Madrid who slept in their cars, children like me who came from every corner to make us feel that no, no Valencian walks. alone .
When you feel pain in your flesh, you first help those close to you and then help those who need it. We Spaniards have always shown solidarity with other countries, but it has been a long time since we needed to work side by side to try to alleviate a traumatic experience within our borders. This has created in Valencia a spirit of sincere closeness which spread to the rest of the nationwho considers us one of his own and who has come from every possible place to our aid. Visca Valencia and Viva España.
