Losing a house is not only losing the physical space we live in, it is also losing part of the memory that comes with little things. With the memories accumulated over the decades that connect us to those who are no longer here, to the life before and to past moments, which in some way construct a part of who we are. In addition to the more than 200 deaths and incalculable material losses caused by the DANA floods, there are those of objects, some passed down from generation to generation, which were in the devastated houses whose tenants are working hard to recover from the mud.
The bracelet that the grandmother always wore, those movie tickets from the first kiss, the newspaper from adolescence, the postcard that the uncle sent from Cuba… There are many memories that a house contains and who end up drawing a map of the cardinal points. that you don’t need to see every day, but you need to know they’re there. And among them, family photographs occupy a preponderant place. Aware of this, the University of Valencia launched an initiative to recover as many albums as possible from the mud and water and asked those affected not to get rid of them, even “even if they show a high degree of deterioration.
“These photographs are priceless. Many people call us these days and tell us that even though they have lost a lot, they are happy to be able to save it. We are talking about the memory of hundreds and hundreds of families from all the affected populations,” explains Marisa Vázquez de Agredos, director of heritage of the university, who proposed the initiative in collaboration with the Analysis and Diagnostic Laboratory works of art. The deadlines vary depending on the damage: some photos will be enough to “wash and dry”, but in other cases “more complex processes will be necessary”, adds the restorer.
The work team is already traveling through the areas hardest hit by the disaster. The first municipality It’s Catarrojawhere they collected material from door to door from people so far interested. “They are very moved, like when they call us. They also tell us about other objects or souvenirs that they want to recover. This morning, a woman took out Second Republic banknotes that her father collected, for example. These kinds of things have a very big emotional importance,” explains Vázquez de Agredos.
We were going to throw away the albums, we thought there was nothing to do. I picked them up crying, it’s something super important and you only realize it when they’re gone.
Xusa Sanz
— Affected by DANA
Xusa Sanz saw it in her own skin. She lives in Catarroja, but “fortunately” in a third floor which avoided greater losses than the van and car she had in the garage, which were completely flooded. However, the ground floor in which his parents lived until now in Massanassa, in which the water reached the ceiling, did not suffer the same fate. “The house is sealed and completely unusable. They are alive, but they have lost everything,” laments this nurse and nutritionist specializing in women’s health. This “everything” includes your possessions and the memories of your life.
“We were barely able to save anything. My grandfather’s ashes, which were in the dining room and which we lost, or some of my great-grandmother’s earrings which were very dear to my mother were of great sentimental value. But nothing, nothing, it’s like a horror film. The water destroyed everything, there was furniture from the entrance which ended up in the corral. What we have been doing these days is not stopping cleaning the house and taking things out, but they are compacted in the mud and cannot be recognized,” says Sanz, who now lets out a sigh of relief when she thinks that the family albums were saved from the worst effects due to the fact that they were in a box “that was left on the mud and not compacted in it” and only They are soaked and full of mud.
However, he thought them unrecoverable until he learned of the initiative of the University of Valencia, which was joined by entities such as the Polytechnic School, the Valencian Museum of Ethnology or the Spanish Group conservation. “We were going to throw them away, we thought there was nothing to do. I picked them up crying, it’s something super important and you only realize it when they’re gone. It sounds superficial, but it’s not, so I’m hoping to get them back, even if it’s just a few. These are the photos of my grandparents, of my parents’ wedding, of our childhood… Not the clothes, not the jewelry, not the money… The worst moment was giving them away for lost”, recalls Sanz, who when uploading to Instagram an image recounting this received “an avalanche” of messages telling her not to throw them away because they could help her at the university, which she has already contacted.
Dialogue with things
The significance to many people of the little things they cherish, including photographs, becomes more evident when extreme events cause devastation to the homes that store them. This is something that Jorge Moreno, member of the International Center for Memory and Human Rights of the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the UNED, has studied in depth, which has a section dedicated to study of objects linked to disasters. Among others, the civil war and Franco’s repression, the group analyzes how the descendants of those shot kept as amulets the objects that their loved ones owned or wore at the time of their death, in order to keep their memory alive.
Intimacy within the home lies in these things. This is why losing it goes beyond material loss, the trajectory is eliminated, the one that connects us to the past and the one that projects us towards the future. Without a home, you lose the idea of who you are
Jorge Moreno
— Anthropologist
The team is also studying this relationship with objects from people affected by the La Palma volcano and who lost their homes, whom anthropologists interviewed two years ago. “The house is a large envelope which shelters furniture, objects, ornaments, clothing, symbols, signs… The intimacy of the house, which largely shapes the identity, is sheltered in these things, it feeds on dialogue with them.” . This is why losing it “becomes a drama that goes well beyond material loss because it involves the loss of references that condense emotional strength. The trajectory is eliminated, the one which connects us to the past and the one which projects us towards the future. Without a home, you lose the idea of who you are,” summarizes Moreno, who offers those affected by DANA his collaboration “in any initiative in which we can help.”
Regarding the photographs in particular, Bruna Álvarez, anthropologist and researcher of the AFIN group at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, agrees that losing them “is losing an irrecoverable symbolic memory” which is linked “to something almost sacred and very unique” because Thanks to them, many people connect “to their familiar symbolic universe” whether it is collective or relative to a person. In fact, in some cases they are of particular importance in remembering those who are no longer here. “There are those who do not want or cannot see photographs and those who do. For the latter it is usually very important, because in a way it means keeping that person present,” explains Álvarez.
The emotional impact
Furthermore, on many occasions images support stories that are told through them, their value therefore transcending the material. Xusa Sanz, for example, says that once a year he gets together with his family to show together the family slides of some of the photographs taken with the camera his father bought in 1982. “It’s a moment important, full of laughter”. , of memories, of “what you looked like” or “look what the living room looked like before”. For me, it’s one of the few ways to connect with the past, to know where we come from and who we are because sometimes we forget,” he reflects.
Far from underestimating the emotional impact that ceasing to have these images can imply, Guillermo Fouce, professor of psychology at the Complutense University of Madrid, comments that sometimes “this type of symbolic and subjective losses have more ‘impact than objective losses’ because ‘they have consequences on the person’s own identity. This is why the president of Psychology Without Borders welcomes initiatives such as those of the University of Valencia and emphasizes that losses of this type must also have their place in the work of supporting victims.
He sums it up like this: “We also need to develop them. It’s a different type of grief than the physical loss of someone, but it’s that too. In relation to objects, photographs, memories and goods that will not be recovered, it is important to work on the recovery of associated experiences. With a drawing, a new photo, write the meaning it had. In these broken lives, what we must do is rebuild so that we can move forward.
