Evacuees, ash and lava on 'la isla bonita': "Here people take it easy, except those who may lose their homes"

A vertical column of smoke can be seen at a distance from the Canary Island of La Palma.

Its steep orography and its forests have had to give way since this Sunday to a new absolute protagonist: the lava that flows from the new volcano that has erupted and that threatens populations such as Jedey or El Paraíso (both in the municipality of El Paso ).

The noise of the lava echoes for tens of kilometers.

The event has disrupted the lives of the islanders who reside in the southern part of the peaceful

, a favorite terrain for lovers of mountaineering and

.

Its residents do not stop forwarding videos with the latest images of the laundry moving forward and surrounding inhabited areas.

Hundreds of residents of towns such as the tourist area of ​​Puerto Naos or La Bombilla sleep tonight in two municipal soccer fields in El Paso and Los Llanos, on the slopes of the new volcano whose runoff threatens dozens of nearby houses at this time.

The schoolchildren of these two municipalities will also notice something different: this Monday they will not have class.

More information

• The authorities have already evacuated 5,000 people due to the eruption of the volcano on La Palma

"We are calm, with some cold, but here people take it easy, except those who may lose their homes," explains by phone Alejandro, an employee in a grocery store in Los Llanos.

The players of the local team, CD Mensajero (Second B) speak during the flight back from Gran Canaria about the possible negative effects on tourism, loud enough for the President of the Government of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor, to hear them. Torres, with whom they have shared a flight.

"Things are dangerous up there," says a police officer who prevents the passage to areas near the volcano.

"Look at me, I'm covered in ashes."

"It's exciting," says Monica, a teacher on the island, "but at the same time it's worrying, because there are many houses threatened by lava."

The new volcano of La Palma (Canary Islands) erupted this Sunday at 3:12 p.m. local time, in Montaña Rajada, in the municipality of El Paso. A small earthquake preceded, in the Las Manchas neighborhood of the La Palma municipality of El Paso, a large explosion that was followed by a huge column of smoke and the expulsion of pyroclasts. The magma originally caused two fissures, two different eruptive mouths in the mountain through which lava flows flowed. According to Involcan (Instituto Volcanológico de Canarias), in just a few hours, those two cracks became seven.

The level of emergency has turned red on the island at 5:00 p.m. local time, and affects the municipalities of Tazacorte, El Paso, Fuencaliente, Mazo and Los Llanos de Aridane, with some 35,000 people affected in total. The seismic swarm of Cumbre Vieja that began last Saturday, September 11, has led, in a rapid and energetic process, into a telluric episode that occurs half a century after Teneguía, so far the youngest surface volcano in Spain. The volcano has emerged in an uninhabited mountain area while the population with reduced mobility in nearby towns was being evacuated, causing small forest fires. The Civil Guard has already evacuated 5,000 people affected by the volcano.