Losing a house is not only losing the physical space in which we live, it is also losing a part of the memory that goes with the little things. With the memories accumulated over decades that connect us with those who are no longer here, with the life before and the moments past, which somehow builds a piece of who we are. Added to the more than 200 deaths and incalculable material losses caused by the DANA floods are those of those objects, some passed down between generations, that were in the devastated homes 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 diary of adolescence, the postcard that the uncle sent from Cuba… There are many memories that a house houses and that end up drawing a map of cardinal points that you don’t need to see every day, but you do need to know that they are there. And among them, family photographs occupy a prominent place. Aware of this, the University of Valencia has launched an initiative to recover as many albums as possible from mud and water and has asked those affected not to get rid of them even “even if they present a high degree of deterioration.”
“These photographs are invaluable. Many people have been calling these days and telling us that, although they have lost a lot, they are happy to be able to safeguard them. 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 at the university, who has proposed the initiative together with the Work of Art Analysis and Diagnosis Laboratory. The times will vary depending on the damage: some photos will do with “washing and drying,” but in other cases “more complex processes will be required,” adds the conservator.
The team assigned to the work is already touring the areas hardest hit by the catastrophe. The first municipality It has been Catarrojawhere door to door they have collected the material from the people who were so far interested. “They are very moved, just like when they call us. They also tell us about other objects or memories that they want to recover. This morning a woman took out some Second Republic banknotes that her father collected, for example. These types of things have a very high emotional importance,” says Vázquez de Agredos.
We were going to throw away the albums, we thought there was nothing to do. I was picking them up crying, it’s something super important and you don’t realize it until they’re gone.
Xusa Sanz
— Affected by DANA
Xusa Sanz is experiencing it in his own skin. She lives in Catarroja, but “luckily” on a third floor that has avoided greater losses than the van and the car she had in the garage, which was completely flooded. However, the ground floor in which his parents lived until now in Massanassa, in which the water reached the ceiling, has not suffered the same fate. “The house is sealed and completely unusable. They are alive, but they have lost everything,” laments this nurse and nutritionist specialized in women’s health. That “everything” includes your belongings and the memories of a lifetime.
“We have not been able to rescue practically anything. Of great sentimental value were my grandfather’s ashes, which were in the dining room and we have lost them, or some earrings from my great-grandmother that were very special to my mother. But nothing, nothing, this is like a horror movie. The water destroyed everything, there was furniture from the entrance that ended up in the corral. What we have done these days is not stop cleaning the house and taking things out, but they are compacted in the mud and cannot be recognized,” explains Sanz, who now breathes a sigh of relief when she thinks that the family albums were saved from the worst effects due to because they were in a box “that was left on top of the mud and not compacted in it” and only They are soaked and full of mud.
However, he thought they were irrecoverable until he learned about the initiative of the University of Valencia, which has been joined by entities such as the Polytechnic, the Valencian Museum of Ethnology or the Spanish Conservation Group. “We were going to throw them away, we thought there was nothing to do. I was picking them up crying, it’s something super important and you don’t realize it until they’re gone. It seems superficial, but it’s not, so I hope to recover them, even if it’s just a few. They 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 up for lost,” recalls Sanz, who when uploading to Instagram An image telling 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.
The dialogue with things
The meaning that the small things they treasure, including photographs, represent for many people, becomes more evident when extreme events cause the houses that store them to be devastated. It is something that Jorge Moreno, a 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 the study of objects linked to disasters. Among others, the Civil War and Franco’s repression, of which the group analyzes how the descendants of those who were shot have kept as amulets things that their relatives owned or carried at the time of their death as a way of keeping their memory alive.
The intimacy within the house is housed in those things. That is why losing it goes beyond material loss, the trajectory is eliminated, the one that links us to the past and the one that projects us to the future. Without a home you lose the idea of who you are
Jorge Moreno
— Anthropologist
The team also studies this relationship with the objects of those affected by the La Palma volcano who lost their homes, whom anthropologists interviewed two years ago. “The house is a large envelope that houses furniture, belongings, ornaments, clothing, symbols, signs… The intimacy within the house, which largely outlines the identity, is housed in those things, it is nourished by the dialogue with they”. That is why losing it “becomes a drama that goes far beyond material loss because it implies the loss of references that condense emotional strength. The trajectory is eliminated, the one that links us to the past and the one that projects us to 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 with the AFIN group at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, agrees that losing them “is losing an irrecoverable symbolic memory” that is linked “to something almost sacred and very unique” because through In them, many people connect “with their familiar symbolic universe” whether collective or relative to a person. In fact, in some cases they take on special relevance to remember those who are no longer here. “There are those who do not want or can see photographs and those who do. For the latter it is usually very important, because in some way it means keeping that person present,” says Álvarez.
The emotional impact
Furthermore, on many occasions, images support stories that are told through them, hence their value transcends the material. Xusa Sanz, for example, says that once a year he meets with his family to project together the family slides of some of the photographs taken with the camera that his father bought in 1982. “It is an important moment, full of laughter.” , of memories, of ‘how you looked’ or ‘look what the living room was like before’. For me it is one of the few ways to connect with the past, to know where you come from and who you are because sometimes you 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 are more impactful than objective ones” because “they have consequences for the person’s own identity. That is why the president of Psychology Without Borders celebrates initiatives such as those of the University of Valencia and highlights that losses of this type must also have their place in the work of supporting victims.
He sums it up like this: “They also have to be elaborated. It is a different type of grief than the physical loss of someone but it is also that. In relation to objects, photographs, memories and belongings that will not be recovered, it is important to work on the recovery of the associated experiences. With a drawing, a new photo, write the meaning it had. In these broken lives what we have to do is rebuild to be able to move forward.”
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