(Los Llanos de Aridane) They had dreamed of it ever since the eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano forced them to leave their home. But the first evacuees to be able to return home to the Spanish island of La Palma, in the Canaries, saw their joy tarnished by the apocalyptic vision of an ocean of ash covering houses and landscape.
“It’s like a plain” of volcanic ash, “another world,” sighs Félix Rodríguez, a 61-year-old mason, sweeping the black sand accumulated on the roof of his house to make it fall on his terrace below.
The resident of La Palma, driven from his home by the eruption, is one of 1,000 evacuees, out of a total of 7,000, who were allowed to return to their homes this week.
But, like many others, he will not be able to settle there immediately.
Because, to the ashes which obstruct the doors and paths are added the lack of running water and the destruction of a road in the Aridane valley, which forces residents to go around the island – nearly two hours drive – for journeys that once lasted five minutes.
The lava miraculously spared Félix Rodríguez’s house. But not the neighboring cemetery, from which only a few rare tombstones emerge. “They never bothered me,” breathes the sixty-year-old, pointing to the deceased, for whom he says he prayed in vain so that the lava does not invade the graves.
Gift “of the Three Wise Men”
The eruption of Cumbre Vieja, which began on September 19, was officially declared over on December 25, after 10 days of inactivity. The lava destroyed more than 1,300 houses and covered 1,250 hectares of land, including plantations of bananas, avocados and vines.
Carmen Acosta, 57, is one of the lucky few to have been able to sleep in their house on Monday night for the first time after more than three months at the hotel.
It evokes a gift “from the Three Kings”, who traditionally bring gifts to children in Spain on January 6.
His house, very modest, is characteristic of this small island of the Canary archipelago: on one level, with bright blue walls, an orchard, vines that climb along the porch and a view that is lost. in the Atlantic Ocean.
Her parents, in their eighties, live with her in this little house. Tired of the return journey, they rest near bags of clothing, food and medicine that they brought back from the hotel.
“We still have a lot of things to clean up. Even in six months, we will not come to the end. There is a lot of ashes, a lot of garbage… It’s horrible, ”says Carmen.
“Like a cemetery”
In the area affected by the volcano, ash covers the trunks of fruit trees, the tops of which resemble simple shrubs. Mandarins, oranges and apples hang down from the ground.
Recently retired, Gladys Jerónimo, 65, hoped to get a well-deserved rest after years of hard work.
But “for now, it’s just that: sadness, and cleaning up, cleaning up,” she says, sweeping and tidying the plants from her porch.
This former cleaning lady claims to feel “a lot of joy and helplessness at the same time”. “Joy because it’s over, but helplessness, because we can’t come back” definitively, the water not yet having been restored while the lava destroyed the pipes.
Her neighbor, María Zobeida Pérez Cabrera, a 68-year-old retired caregiver, describes the shock she felt when she returned to her parents’ old house.
It was “horrible, like a cemetery.” Everything we could see around was black, there was neither ground nor roof, even the plants were black, ”she says, energetically filling wheelbarrows with ashes which she then empties a few meters from her. House.
Faced with the task that awaits them with her husband, she tries hard to remain optimistic: “everything that we remove today will no longer be there tomorrow”, she said in a philosophical tone.
“Show” and “reality”
At the head of a family banana farm for 10 years, Jorge Díaz Hernández, he does not know when he will be able to find his home, like thousands of other evacuees to whom no date of return has, at this stage, been communicated.
This is the “million dollar question”, shrug the 36-year-old farmer from the top of the mountain of Las Rosas, in Los Llanos de Aridane.
During the eruption, the thirty-something regularly visited this promontory, very popular with those who wanted to observe the volcano, to check if his farm was still standing. She was ultimately spared the lava, but he estimates it would take three years to revive production. And he admits he’s had enough.
“I’m throwing in the towel, I’m going to devote myself to something else […] I was already exhausted by the treatment of agriculture and bananas, by the prices, the expenditure on water, all that. There, it is the drop of water that broke the camel’s back, ”he assures us.
“The volcano was a spectacle within the drama, we had something. And now it’s over, ”he laments. “We were like on a cloud and now we are back to reality.”