The lesson of Joan, a boy from Paiporta who saved his life but lost his piano: “It was important and now it’s not”

At the foot of the Paiporta ravine, the carefree and fast sound of a ukulele stands out above the sirens and the engines of the vehicles that are busy cleaning the street. A few meters away, at the door of a low reddish house, Joan, 11 years old, strums the four strings sitting on a small wicker chair during one of his breaks. Joan’s family’s house has suffered the same fate as many others in the area: the water flooded the ground floor, destroying everything in its path. Among the belongings that the water swallowed was the family piano that Joan used to play. A piano from the Sánchez Ferris house with more than a hundred years of history and that had survived the previous floods in Valencia. “It was important and now it’s not,” he says.