Mom, we lose everything

And as the lava flowed, more neighborhoods were being evicted. Like the one in La Laguna, where Alicia Brito's family lived a very hard early morning. "We are waiting for the ambulance to take my mother, who is bedridden, and we are already following her" towards El Fuerte, a former military barracks that has been set up to accommodate those affected, Brito declared a few minutes after he from a police car they were ordered to leave their homes. “We are nervous for my mother. I don't know how those people will be who have to leave their homes behind without knowing if they will be able to return or not, it has to be very hard, "said this palm tree, who maintained the hope that her home would not be affected. "We can't complain," she consoled herself as she waited on the street for the arrival of the ambulance with her father, Adelto Brito, her 9-year-old daughter Lidia Rodríguez, and the dog, Leia, who won't stop crying. "She is very nervous, she has been very upset since last night [Saturday]."

Early morning that also seemed interminable for the young Javier Castro Fuente and María Nieves, who followed the laundry from the ditch of the LP-1 highway. María Nieves complained about the lack of empathy of some people who came to see that show. “There are many material losses. It is very sad, because you lose everything you have in that home, the memories, the time it took you to build it," he commented. In the distance, the lava advanced towards Todoque, where Castro has a house, "the one of a lifetime." At one in the morning the magma had not yet arrived. "Tomorrow [Monday] it is supposed to be there already," he peeked.

The last chance

Almost a day later, yesterday evening, Javier Castro and María Nieves had the last chance to get close to the house just a few hours before they the volcano will engulf her. He had already done it with a small rural construction that they have in Las Manchas. "He already took her away," Javier recounted by phone when he returned from his house in Todoque, where he had managed to save "the two smallest sheep" of the five he had. And he anticipated that his neighborhood will practically disappear under the future malpaís that will form the new landscape. "It will bury the church and the school," María Nieves was right to say, adding that if the lava passes to the left of the neighborhood's mountain facing the sea "it will also affect the house of a relative of Javier's" and if it did so the right will take “a luxury development”. About his home, no hope that he will be saved. "Everything is going to happen here, it's a disgrace," said María Nieves as she described how a rain of ashes fell on her, accompanied by a strong smell of sulfur. "We have to go now," he said before hanging up.

Among so many hard stories is that of the young Elena Padrón, 21 years old and also a resident of Todoque. "We have seen videos and the raw thing is there." «We did not take anything because we thought it was going to explode in Jedey and our area was not in danger. I went to my room, I took the clothes that were on the bed, the laptop, I forgot the charger, and I took the car and went out with my two Labrador retrievers. One of the main problems they have encountered is misinformation. "My uncles had been told first that they had lost their home, then that they had not," thus aggravating the anguish experienced by the thousands of people evicted by the earthquake.

A night in the barracks

There is also that of Juan Díaz, better known as Ovidio, an 86-year-old manchero who spent the night from Sunday to Monday in the Santa Cruz de La Palma barracks together another 200 neighbors who were taken from their homes. Like Juan Luis García Camacho, he has witnessed three eruptions. In the one in San Juan, in 1949, he was 13 years old. “It exploded at 9 in the morning. It looked like the atomic bomb. It raised a cloud 200 meters above. The explosions threw burning stones. The earth looked like concrete. It was incredible”, he recalled with a very good memory, which, together with his good humor, made him the person with the most media coverage of those who left El Fuerte. However, Ovidio left his house with what he was wearing, with what little he could get out of his house. Dressed in a shirt and pants, he walked around the barracks with the help of his wooden cane to combat the osteoarthritis he suffers from. "If I sit down, I don't get up," he would say sarcastically. Del Teneguía only commented that it was "very small" and about the volcano that was born on Sunday, which had barely felt any tremors prior to the eruption. "Only one in the morning, when I was having breakfast." A little after ten past three in the afternoon was when he saw the column of white smoke. "I didn't feel any explosion." "Shortly," this octogenarian was evicted. "I took the most essential, I did not have time to change my clothes or bathe." And he speculated that "tomorrow or the day after" he would leave the barracks in the direction of his house, in the coastal neighborhood of La Bombilla.

Daniel Álvarez and Kley Melián also sleep in El Fuerte, a couple from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria but who have lived in Las Manchas for three years. Owners of the bar El Aperitivo. "We do not know anything. Neighbors have told me that for now the lava has not reached them, but that it is not ruled out because the volcano continues to evolve, which has three or four paths, "Álvarez declared at mid-morning shortly after receiving the visit of the President of the Government of Spain. , Pedro Sánchez, the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and the Canarian President Ángel Víctor Torres.

The “boom”, as many have described the beginning of the eruption, was described by Daniel Álvarez with an onomatopoeic “bru, bru, bru”. «We looked at the door of the bar and saw how it exploded up, it was incredible. I don't even know what went through our heads. We ran down to our house, we took the dog, the parrot, I released the two chickens so that they could flee, and we left by foot with the car. Kley Melián added that he was "desalted." «My 16-year-old daughter Alesandra had an anxiety attack, we had to stop to give her a glass of water and sugar, she just told me: mom, we lose everything. I reassured him by telling him that all this was material, that we had to save ourselves. "It is one thing to see it and another to live it," Melián adds. "People say this is historic. It may be historical, but what I feel and the fear that I have inside, and the one that I experienced, will never be forgotten in my life. This is very hard," he says.

Large German colony

The language of lava is also taking stories from the large German colony that resides in the Las Manchas area, such as that of Johann and Ursula Schmit, a German couple from 69 and 70 years old who has lived in La Noria, a town very close to the epicenter of the volcano. Yesterday they were wearing what they were wearing: she a nightgown, he pants and a T-shirt. They left their house with the essentials. "We left quickly, with some important documents, money, passports, glasses," says Johann; “insulin”, Ursula points out, who just a few minutes before had been visited by Sonia Herrera Montesino, the doctor at the Los Llanos de Aridane Health Center, to measure her blood sugar level and advise her to go to the soccer field to wait. «And the dog», a thousand milks named Rocky who accompanied them in the back seat of the Dacia Duster in which they spent the night. "We are very tired," Johann commented in good Spanish. Where will they sleep tonight [by yesterday for the reader]? "I don't know," replies the husband, who explains that they are finding it difficult to stay in hostels or apartments because they do not accept animals.

About their home, the couple from the Bavarian region claims to have no information of any kind. "We don't know if we can go back, this scenario is horrible," she says. A scenario that, within what is possible, was taken at times with smiles while having a paella for lunch that social resources have provided. "It's life", settled philosophically Ursula Schmit.