Water, always water. When the noise of the machines stops, when the camera lights go out, when the agitation of volunteers, soldiers, journalists stops, it is the sound of the water that breaks the silence of the streets of Letur and accompanies the neighbors in this prolonged time. it started on Tuesday. Three days have passed since that placid noise that always follows them became a roar and the water of the stream, their most precious possession and their pride, was transformed into a fury of mud, branches, rocks which crossed the city like a stab in the back. . , engulfing houses and memories. Since then, the wait has turned into despair, as, three days later, there is still no trace of five of the six people missing after the flood caused by DANA.
“It happened like a movie, like a tsunami. A curtain of water of enormous height,” says Manuel Ortuño Tomás, one of the neighbors who, early Friday, approached what was the beginning of the old town and where now the water recedes left a huge amount of sediment.
“It was all of a sudden, from one to 100. Like you step on the gas and boom!” There was a woman who was driving by a short time ago with her son. “He had the ability to see that it was going to leak and they managed to get down and escape, but he caught those two workers there,” he adds, reminding two of the five people still looking for each other, Juan Alejandro and Manuel, 34 and 46 years old, who were climbing the hill in a City Hall van when the water overflowed.
The other three are Antonia, a woman who returned to live in the city after her retirement, and Jonathan and Mónica, a couple aged 37 and 38. Their house, one of the first in the old town, and from which they asked for help until the last moment before disappearing, no longer exists. And this hole, this tear at the entrance to the city, is the image of the drama that we are experiencing in these hours in Letur.
There, excavators work to remove earth and create a walkway that unites the old city with the new, while EMU dogs search the alleys that, in another era, on a festive bridge, would have been filled with tourists . The search is being carried out on the surface, after Civil Guard divers unsuccessfully submerged bodies of water, swimming pools and the rambla canal that crosses the city, in the five kilometers that separate them from the Segura river.
“My brother went to work at two o’clock and it was ten to two. My sister-in-law was going to go to school to pick up the girl. Five more minutes and there would be no one home,” explains Tamara Muñoz, Jonathan’s sister, who doesn’t understand how this could have happened. The last image he has of himself is the one described to him by the priest and the neighbors who saw how he fought to get to safety: “They asked for help and my brother tried to using planks to cross to another house, they say he tried to grab a blanket, a sheet, and was tying something to try to get out of there. “Both, him and his wife.”
The couple had two children, a 10-year-old girl and a boy who will be 14 this Saturday. “It came to them suddenly. But the flood came from above more than 30 kilometers across the mountains. They already knew that the Sabinar was coming down. How did they not have time to tell them to evacuate? Yes, when you light a fire in the forest, the Seprona is there in five minutes! I live in Socovos, a few kilometers from here, and I found out because I was finishing eating and my cousin called me. “How are Mónica and Joni?” he said to me. And I: ‘What are they going to be like? GOOD’. But it hadn’t rained much in Letur, it was in the mountains,” he repeats. The problem was not the water that fell in the town, but rather the water that flooded the head of the basin, in the territory of Moratalla, already in Murcia.
“It really hasn’t rained much here. Only 35 liters fell here. We have had an alert indicating that the meteorological plan has been activated by the Autonomous Community of Castile-La Mancha and all administrations are notified that there is an orange alert,” says the mayor of the city, Sergio Marín, in a moment of rest. of the rooms of the Nuestra Señora de la Asunción school, which has become the headquarters of the city’s emergency operations.
Asked about neighbors’ comments about the amount of weeds falling along the water along the river bed, he replied: “I met recently, a few months ago, with the president of the Hydrographic Confederation of Segura. With him and with the commissioner, I discussed the possibility and necessity of cleaning the Letur canal. Since 2009, if I’m not mistaken, the area of the stream, closest to the town, had not been cleaned.
Marín is 29 years old and this is his second term as head of the city council. He was first elected in 2019, when he was 24 and had just finished law school.
His dream was to accompany his neighbors in this second life that Letur had been living for several years after a tourist reconversion which transformed it into one of the most sought-after destinations of this mountain, which earned it the nickname “pearl of Segura”. and “aquatic paradise”, for its natural swimming pools with crystal clear waters.
“The water city that is affected by water… It will no longer be Letur as we knew it. But I am sure that it will continue to have this identity,” says the mayor. “In winter there are around 500 people in the whole commune who still live here, and around 60 to 70 people in the old town. But we also have 700 reception places. I don’t even want to imagine what would have happened if the flood had happened this weekend. “I don’t even want to imagine it.”
In another room at the school, food is prepared for soldiers working in rescue operations and volunteers helping clean mud-filled homes and basements. Decorations from a Halloween party that didn’t happen hang in the little ones’ classrooms.
Outside, on the patio, there are hugs from neighbors who reunite with those who live outside and have returned to town to reunite with their loved ones. Among them is the singer Rozalén. “We’ve all felt that helplessness of being away and when you’re here, even if you can’t do anything, at least we’re together. Even if it’s to cry together. But you are here and you even feel a kind of relief when you arrive,” he says.
Many mention it when talking about the renaissance of the city, the new life of Letur in recent years focused on tourism. “This town is very small. Now I was in a pretty critical moment. We organize the Festival against rural depopulation, Leturalma, in the summer and we have been present there for many years. It’s a city that rows a lot to let people know, but there are very few of us. We all have a relationship with everyone, with those who are there, with those who have disappeared, with the deceased woman. I know perfectly well who they are. Monica is from my fifth. We played together when we were little. And the lady they found was close to my grandmother,” adds the artist.
Antonio Garrido also returned this Thursday to the family home in Letur where he returns whenever he can. It is the place of reunions, of his children’s summers, of reconciliation with the place he had to leave because “he was very hungry”.
He has not lived here since he left at the age of 18 to seek, like many, a future outside. He is now 75 years old and remembers this exodus of the sixties which emptied this city and many others of its young people. They were going to Murcia, Castellón, Valencia… “These days I have felt a great, very great emptiness. People have been leaving here for decades. Today, there are only a thousand people registered, and many have returned in recent years but after retiring.” Like Antonia, one of the people still wanted, alongside Manuel, Juan Alejandro, Mónica and Jonathan. “Let’s fight. They are looking. Lots of good people looking. They go out of their way and help us a lot. Lots of warmth from people, lots of support. And that’s what gives us strength,” says Tamara Muñoz, Jonathan’s sister.
