Isidro Manuel Martín drives a van with the back full of the plastics used here to collect bananas. His shirt is stained with dirt and ash from the volcano. Wait behind the wheel in an exasperating queue of dozens of stopped cars and trucks trying to enter the southwest area of the island of La Palma, close to the sea, threatened by the path of the lava from the volcano and evicted as dangerous since Sunday . They all try to pass the control of the police and the Civil Guard. Everyone has a reason: the lawyer Alfonso Montesdeoca has his second residence in the tourist town of Puerto Naos, and he wants to access it, see if everything is in order, take a refrigerator with him on the trip and then close the door until time comes. top.He has looked at the possible route that the lava mountain will take and believes that his house will be saved. Few cars behind, Isidro Manuel, the banana grower, says that he witnessed from the window how the volcano exploded on Sunday, in front of his house, and saw the trees jump. "I already knew that I was losing the house," he explains. He lost her. "The house, the vineyard, the winery, everything," he explains, still looking at the front of the road. And now, in a matter of days as the mountain of lava accelerates or slows down, it will pulverize, according to its forecasts, its half hectare cultivated. "My whole life is being carried away by this volcano," he says. "And I haven't even finished paying for the farm." The lawyer's second house is saved. The farmer's mortgaged farm disappears.This is how the sinister raffle that operates in this part of the island of La Palma since the volcano erupted.
The lava from the volcano is currently crushing the Todoque neighborhood, in Los Llanos, further north.
When you pass this area, you will find, in the two and a half kilometers that separate you from the sea, with a succession of farms and farms, most of them banana trees, which take advantage of the hot and humid climate of this part of the island.
Now, the lava mountain is sliding very slowly, at about four meters an hour.
It is an almost imperceptible movement, but enough to crush everything.
At this rate it will take weeks of agony to reach the sea.
But nothing prevents me from speeding up.
It may be that in the coming days you will find a steeper terrain, or that the volcano will expel more material, or that you will find fewer obstacles.
Farmers try to save what they can.
Isidro Manuel makes his own calculations “Is it still in Todoque?” He asks, referring, without naming it, to the lava mountain.
And when he confirms the answer, it is said that, if the controls of the police or the Civil Guard allow it, he will be able to harvest the harvest, the last harvest of bananas.
"It's a disgrace!" Says someone next to him.
"No," he replies, "it is the law of nature," he adds, fatalistically, bitterly.
No irrigation networks and damaged pipes
There are many farmers in the area who these days try to save what they can.
La Palma is the second Canary Island in banana production, behind Tenerife.
But today there are irrigation networks that do not work because of the volcano, the pipes will get worse at every moment and it will be increasingly difficult to move around this side of the island, subject to controls and roadblocks.
More information
The panorama after the lava: "This is very hard, houses disappear before our eyes"
The La Palma volcano, besieged by land, sea, air and space
The Government prepares a specific plan to cover the damage of the volcano on La Palma
In a van, a father and a son and an employee advance, seated in the front seat. The father and the son are called in the same way: Andrés Concepción. One is 61 years old and 11 years old when the Teneguía volcano erupted and still remembers that it was preceded by months of continuous earthquakes. Your son is 29 years old and he will not forget last Sunday when his life and that of his family began to fall apart. Today the three are trying to pass the police control to see how the three hectares of bananas are. If they are still alive. They don't know if the lava is going to destroy them. They don't know if the insurance will pay for it if this happens. They shrug at the question. In theory, the Insurance Compensation Consortium will take care of the losses, but all three are suspicious. "To know when the aid arrives for the houses or the land",says the father. Then he adds, pointing to the windshield of the car, stained like everything in this part of the island, with a blackish and sticky ash: "They have told us that the ash can drown the plants, that perhaps we will find them already damaged."
Every evening, on La Palma, a hundred people climb the La Laguna mountain, located several kilometers from the volcano.
From there, they observe in perspective the flares hundreds of meters high and listen in awe to its almost continuous snoring.
From there you can also appreciate very well the advance of the lava, its dark trail and the houses and farms that stand in its way to the sea.
At the top of this mountain there are press photographers with their tripods, tourists of natural phenomena or people fascinated by the vision of an erupting volcano in the distance.
Last Tuesday there were also three men from the area, who looked like farmers, who with binoculars looked at the lava mountain and its capricious way of distributing luck and misfortune:
–And after that house, Justo's will come.
"Euripides's house escaped."
"No, he did not escape."
He caught.
Sight.
