The load of 24 tons of aid for Ukraine from the UMU burns the first stage of its journey to the south of Catalonia
In truckers’ jargon, ‘dropping’ is taking advantage of the downward slope of a road to exceed the maximum speed for which the vehicle has been programmed. José María Cervera, the driver who directs the first humanitarian aid trailer that the University of Murcia has chartered to Ukraine, never allows the rookies he instructs to drop above 94 kilometers per hour. There are many years of experience behind to ignore the risk involved. He is only a year away from retirement, but the proximity of his retirement has not prevented him from saying yes to the proposal of the company ESP Solutions to take care of this trip to the border of a country at war. He insists on not giving himself too much importance, but what he carries on his back is more necessary than ever for the people who have lost everything. We drive at 90 kilometers per hour, but several trucks overtake us on the left. José María, Chema inside the truck, lets out a snort of annoyance. “There are people who don’t know what they have on their backs, because one of these trucks, loaded to the brim, is an unstoppable shell. If you go over a certain speed you can lose it. And you kill yourself, and you kill whoever you catch », he assures. We travel aboard a 40-ton monster with an imposing appearance that contrasts with the friendliness of slau cargo. The comparison of the vehicle with the impact of a missile brings back the real reason why we are driving on dark roads at dawn. If the shells carried humanitarian aid, the rain of trucks that drenches the Ukrainian border these days would not be necessary. Large vehicles that arrive loaded with solidarity and basic products that yesterday could be purchased at the supermarket or pharmacy and for which today there is only the question of whether there is a supermarket or a pharmacy.
The news that arrives from the country is far from any glimmer of hope. We know of the explosions, of death dripping over Irpin, of treasonably violated humanitarian corridors with a bombardment on civilians whom death finds while they are forced to leave the destroyed home. The photograph of a complete family inert on the ground is terrifying. Their suitcases are on the ground next to the corpses, perfectly closed, folded clothes that no one will wear again.
A few hours earlier, at the end of the truck’s farewell ceremony in Murcia with the Ukrainian authorities and students, the heart of all the material collection at the university, the truck headed for a warehouse in Molina de Segura to load more products before to continue. Every journey of a trailer on Europe’s roads is a logistical battle where a gap in a trailer is a missed opportunity. There, the stop lasts longer than expected, so that although the initial intention is to get to Barcelona, the route has to be recalculated. In this, there is no better on-board computer than the brain of Chema, a calm Navarrese resident in Alicante who recites the four keys “to do a good job” as soon as he begins: “See, study the situation and act”. “And the fourth?” he asked. “You don’t know how glad I am that you ask. How many never ask for the fourth! ‘To be’, the fourth is ‘to be’, and there are many who are not. And that’s how misfortunes come on the road », he says. Then he calculates that the end of the first day will end in Tarragona. The truck definitely leaves Molina after 8:30 p.m.
the nuclear shadow
The first stop arrives at half past one between Castellón and Benicarló. A short break of 15 minutes in a service area where a huge number of trucks overflow the parking space. They are the invisible army that makes everything work. The pawns of national logistics who have kept the country on its feet during the worst phases of the pandemic. After that we resumed the march. The trip will last until well into the morning. “Look, the nuclear power plant,” he points out. To our right stands Vandellós II. It consists of a single reactor capable of developing a power of 1087 Megawatts. We crossed it shortly after the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, asked for a security framework for the Ukrainian power plants, fearful after the missile attack by the Russian army against the facilities of the Zaporizhia plant , the largest nuclear complex in Europe. “It is not safe or sustainable that internal and external communications have been interrupted and cut off,” he warns. “I am deeply concerned about this turn of events.” Zaporizhia is six times bigger than the giant we left behind in Tarragona.
We arrived at El Médol station, next to the Tarragona town of Altafulla, at 3:40 in the morning. But the rest area is overflowing. Not a single space to park the truck to comply with the statutory rest of eleven hours. The fine rain waters the AP-7 as humanitarian aid passes, a chirimiri that penetrates the bones like a trickle of bad news. At four in the morning, the final destination of the first section of the route arrives at the El Penedés rest area. Time to sleep in the cabin bunks. The predictions made by the best on-board computer are fulfilled. The only one capable of volunteering to bring humanitarian aid to a war zone.