When the victims of the La Palma volcano express their sadness, which has been spitting lava for two months this Friday, they begin by talking about their home, their gardens or their banana trees. Then they allude to another type of loss. It is less tangible, but it squeezes their chests when they pass their former neighbors: the community, the day-to-day shared by the inhabitants of the areas now buried by lava. The eruption has scattered them. “It makes me very sad to think that we have lost that, that I no longer have my neighbors, nor are we going to find ourselves where we did before. That is irreparable ”, says Ana Delia Armas, one of those affected.
These are the stories of some of those spaces, the public squares where life happened and which are now fire and rock.
La Laguna school: “It was a meeting point for the neighborhood”
“A school is not a building, it is the space in which the community meets.” This phrase presides over the cultural center of Los Llanos de Aridane that welcomes students and teachers from La Laguna school, devoured by lava. It is a declaration of intent from the teachers: “Let’s not talk about the center in the past tense,” asks the director, Mónica Viña (50 years old).
It demands the reconstruction of the center to recover “one of the main meeting points of the neighborhood.” “It is a rural school, where people came walking. Then the mothers stayed outside, talked, had a coffee … They said it was their corner ”, recalls the director. “La Laguna had a pharmacy, a couple of restaurants, the neighborhood association and us. We developed cultural life for children outside of school hours. We gave workshops of all kinds. We kept people in the neighborhood, they didn’t have to move ”.
The situation has radically changed: of the 163 students that the center had before the eruption, 113 remain. The other 50 go to other schools, closer to the homes or hotels to which the families have been evacuated. “We miss them,” Viña explains.
The director of the center assures that the emotional cost of this crisis in the students is being very high: “The other day a mother told me that her son told her that he was not behaving so badly that the volcano continued to exist.” “We have to give them tools so that when they get home, which is not theirs and where three more families live, they know that they may be sad, but also that there are moments for joy,” adds the school director.
She also tries to do emotional work with the parents: “They are families that had a normal, resolute, dignified life. And now there are many who have nothing, they have to order breakfast. They are not used to it, you have to be delicate when you ask them to take a bag with toiletries ”.
The La Laguna-Todoque stadium: “What saddens me the most is not the field itself, but the memories that remain there”
Promotion league to Third Division. Club Deportivo Argual faces El Paso, with a bigger budget and a better squad. The locals are losing by one goal and the game is about to end. And, then, Miguel Sosa scores this great goal.
Miguel’s historic goal, the 1st in the history of our Club in a Promotion Play-off.
Posted by Argual Sports Club on Sunday, April 28, 2019
“In the end we didn’t get promoted, they beat us in the next game, but that goal was crazy. It gave us options to climb. We explode with happiness. It was historic, ”says Fran Vera (34 years old), the club’s secretary. He smiles when he remembers everything he has experienced in the La Laguna-Todoque football stadium, now under meters and meters of magma. “We used to gather there to eat paella, we had coffees while the children trained. I know it says a lot, but really we were like a family there. What saddens me the most is not the field itself, but the memories that remain there, ”says Vera.
Now they play and train in the field of Unión Deportiva Los Llanos de Aridane. “It is a temporary solution”, he points out, aware that the reconstruction of the football field is not a priority of the public administrations: “Before, obviously, the houses go.”
However, he hopes that the club can continue its activity wherever it may be: “I think we are doing a great job. For example, there is only one other club that, like us, has a women’s team ”. His daughter is an Argual player. “When the lava had only devoured half the field, we would look at him and he would say to me: ‘At least we can play football 7’. Imagine the tears when he finished destroying it ”.
Todoque’s office: “It wasn’t a health center, it was a plaza”
“Is the bus stopping here?” Salvador Cáceres (62 years old), better known as Chano, asked the neighbors who met in Todoque’s office. He was the family doctor at the tiny health center, which worked thanks to the efforts of Cáceres, the nurse, and the administrator. “That was not a health center, it was a plaza. There were two benches right outside the door where neighbors met to talk about their things. Many went without an appointment, but since they were there they asked you if you could measure their tension. And I answered them: come in, come in”. “The days of analytics,” continues Cáceres, “you can’t imagine all the people who used to gather there.”
Now all three work at the Los Llanos health center, where they continue to care for their former patients. “They are still in the phase of shock. What I try the most is to lower their anxiety ”. A good part of the consultations are carried out by telephone, since many patients have been rehoused within an hour and a half by car and more than two hours by bus. “There is an empathy between us that at this moment is very necessary. We have known each other for so many years… 95% of my time is for them to vent, for them to talk and for me to listen. They want to tell you so they don’t tell the neighbor who has suffered the same misfortune ”, adds Cáceres.
The family doctor believes that the laundry is “a scar that will never finish healing”: “Older people do not hurt because of them, but because of what their children and grandchildren have lost. We are talking about people who were used to village life, among banana trees and goats. And now you see weeks and weeks in crowded apartments or strange hotels. They are not in prison, but it is as if they are ”, he concludes.
The church and the Plaza de Todoque: “We moved the social life of the neighborhood”
The collapse of the bell tower of the Todoque church was the image of the catastrophe for days. “The bells were heard throughout the Aridane valley,” recalls Alberto Hernández (40 years old), the parish priest of the temple consumed by the lava. He assures that his community was faithful: “There was always very good participation. In other parishes it is difficult to find someone who reads, but here there was a two-month calendar without a name being repeated ”.
The neighborhood residents’ association also had its headquarters in the square, under the church. “We moved the social life of the neighborhood,” says the president of the group, Roberto Leal (46 years). “There was a theater group of older people, Las decided. We also did Pilates, macramé, yoga, basket weaving … And many neighbors got married or celebrated their children’s communions in the living room. It was very big, ”Leal explains. “In addition,” continues the priest, “there was a group of older women called La Escuelita, which developed dynamics to reinforce memory.”
The culmination of the square as the social center of the area were the patron saint festivities, which began on August 21: “Then we held concerts, food for everyone, festivals … We were very close,” recalls Leal. “And the views that the plaza had of the valley and the sea were incredible,” concludes the parish priest.
Emanuela Arduini (45 years old) witnessed all of this serving coffees and beers in the square: “My husband, my daughter and I ran the association’s bar. It is very difficult to get from outside [son italianos] and that they receive you so well. We had no one on the island and they welcomed us. We miss them so much. “
Los Guirres beach: “A very special community had been created”
“I spent two days crying when the lava reached the beach of Los Guirres,” says Néstor Lorenzo (45 years old). He went to that coastal area “every day” with his wife, Diana Rodríguez (41), his daughter and his dog Henna. “Here we dined, ate, spent the day… It was like our home. The last day we went we were alone and I remember there was a rainbow in the sky ”, says Rodríguez, while caressing Henna.
Los Guirres, better known among the neighbors as Playa Nueva, was an “alternative” space, says Rodríguez. “It was the beach you were taking to girlfriend so your parents wouldn’t see you. It was very special ”, the director of the La Laguna school remembers with a laugh.
Lorenzo and Rodríguez went to the beach, mainly, to surf. His dog Henna would stare at them under an umbrella while they were in the water trying to ride the Atlantic. “It was a wild beach that had the best wave on La Palma”, explains Lorenzo. The fajana has devoured the entire beach and continues to grow. “Who knows, maybe there will still be good waves when you can come back, but it won’t be the same anymore. It was a beach that could be easily reached by car [algo no muy común en la isla], which attracted people from all over La Palma. A very special community had been created that welcomed everyone who wanted to join ”, he adds. “Now we never see them. All this is like an explosion that has dispersed us all ”, adds Rodríguez.
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