The La Palma volcano erupted a year ago and was definitively exhausted on December 25, 2021. Four days later, on December 29, the first excavators arrived with the intention of recovering an old and vital road on the island that the lava had left buried.
Without it, the western slope of La Palma, the most thriving, would be cut in two and any management or movement —such as taking the child to school, for example— could mean going around the entire island and taking almost two hours.
Without that highway, neither normal life nor economic activity would come out of collapse.
The undertaking was improbable: it was about making its way through a dark sea of solidified lava, with variable heights ranging from three to 30 meters, following the route of the old road, along three kilometers.
Sometimes in between, sometimes above.
Like Moses parting the waters of the Red Sea, but in living stone.
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Photo gallery: A road over lava
Everything went as planned, relying on an emergency decree from the Canarian Government that empowered them to carry out the works urgently, regardless of ecological considerations.
But after 20 days we had to stop.
The temperature of the dormant lava melted the hoses of the compressors and the emanation of gases put the health of the employees at risk.
Everything was a consequence of the degrees to which the interior of the earth was cooked.
The experts decided that it was necessary to change tactics and forget about the layout of the old road forever.
The volcano, ultimately the creator of the landscape, imposed a new cartography.
They flew drones with thermal sensors to assess the coldest or least hot places.
And then,
"The guys melted two pairs of boots walking through the sharp stones, but they managed it: the path they chose is the one that has been followed," says Fran Leal, councilor for Works of Los Llanos de Aridane (25,000 inhabitants), one of the localities most affected by the volcano.
Several cars traveled on Friday the road that saves the lava from the volcano of La Palma.Samuel Sánchez
On August 1, after eight hectic months, the highway was opened to traffic.
The island was connected again.
There are some conditions: the speed is 20 kilometers per hour, you can not overtake, stop or park for any reason.
Nor can you circulate at night until the power lines are recovered, streetlights are installed and there is light.
And you have to pay attention to some unusual and somewhat sinister signs: one of them, with an eloquent drawing skull, warns that in the area where you step on there are dangerous gas emissions.
Crossing the road, for a foreigner, is an overwhelming experience: the cars come and go in single file, very slowly, with the cone of the volcano in the background, on a track that looks like dirt but is basically crushed lava, which appreciable heat, and traversing a vast expanse of pure black rock.
It literally looks like a road that runs through Mars.
In the distance, the wheels of cars reverberate with heat.
For many residents of the area, the new highway also hides something painful, terrifying and disheartening.
On Friday, Councilor Leal, who has spent a whole year dedicated to repairing the damage caused by the volcano, pointed to a black stump in the middle of the landscape and explained with some astonishment: “There was the church of Todoque, and there the Spar and the field soccer".
And then he pointed to another shapeless piece of blackened lava and added: "There I had a small banana farm and a second home."
It is very difficult to find your way around, to find old landmarks in places that no longer exist.
The inhabitants of the area use Google maps, where the towns, neighborhoods and streets are still listed as they were before being devoured by the volcano and thus they try to guess where their house was, or the house of their parents,
the everyday store or the children's school.
“You go down that road once and you get disoriented.
You pass again and when you find out where you are you are speechless.
Because there is nothing.
A flood or a fire destroys your house, it takes it away, but when the water or the fire goes away, you pitch a tent and start.
Here the soil has been taken, the earth.
It is as if everything had disappeared”, explains José Valentín, 59, a resident of Las Manchas.
The councilor for Works of Los Llanos de Aridane inspected the rehabilitation work of the Las Manchas cemetery on Friday. Samuel Sánchez
Valentin's house is miraculously still standing, but it has been bitten by the lava.
On the right side he took the garden, the garage and scratched a side door that collapsed.
On the other he crushed some crops and a room of tools.
But that's not the worst, he says, with lost sight.
The worst thing is what's in front of him, what's behind him, what's on his sides: the same mass of black lava that has collapsed the houses of his neighbors —many of his wife's relatives— leaving him isolated, implausibly alone, like a survivor in the middle of the moon
Councilman Leal's brigades have already managed to bring him water and electricity through a temporary network and a labyrinth of wall lights, plugs and sockets.
The pipes cannot be buried because the temperature dilates the plastic and ruins the operation.
With everything,
Valentín does not know if he will live again in that house that he built more than 30 years ago and that he does not recognize now.
"It is depressing.
My wife has never wanted to come.”
He and a friend came today to put in a new door because the old one was rendered useless by the onslaught of the laundry and he fears that someone will sneak in and steal it.
Next to the barbecue is a giant white metal crumple that looks like a huge ball of paper and is actually the roof of the garage after the lava messed with it.
Valentín currently lives for rent, paid for by the Administration, after rushing out on the afternoon of Sunday, September 19 at three in the afternoon, after hearing the detonation of the volcano.
The eruption forced in those days the almost immediate eviction of more than 7,000 people.
There are still 190 living in hotels.
The houses destroyed were about 1,300.
130 new houses have already been delivered to affected people who were left homeless.
Many other houses are under construction.
More than 400 affected receive rental aid.
Others live in borrowed housing.
Not all of those evicted lost their homes.
Some were simply forced to evacuate as a precaution.
As the ash areas have been cleaned, the accesses have been enabled and the water and electricity service has been restored, they are returning little by little.
A neighbor helped out at José Valentín's house.
The house was surrounded by lava although it was not destroyed.
Samuel Sanchez
For this, for life to return, this war highway is necessary.
On Friday, Councilman Leal found, not far from Valentín's house, a group of workers taking care of one of the branches.
Among them was the chief plumber of Los Llanos de Aridane, Rubén Barreto.
The first days after the eruption of the volcano, the work of Leal and Barrero consisted, paradoxically, in closing all the mouths of water that the volcano was rendering useless to prevent leaks.
Now they are going the opposite way, connecting pipes, playing with pressure and levels so that entire neighborhoods have water again.
They talk to each other.
They discuss how to access an abandoned house that September 19 and whose time has been paralyzed since that afternoon: the swing is still in the garden,
some plants are kept alive and with flowers thanks to the prodigious nature of the island and that the ash of the volcano has such powerful nutrients that they serve as fertilizer.
Then Leal receives a call not very unusual in this crazy universe.
A neighbor who has found out that they have already opened a concrete road asks him to put a water intake in what was his house.
But now all that remains of his house is a crooked metal ledge from the porch and three crushed bricks.
The rest is a shapeless mass of lava.
But now, all that remains of his house is a crooked metal ledge from the porch and three crushed bricks.
The rest is a shapeless mass of lava.
But now, all that remains of his house is a crooked metal ledge from the porch and three crushed bricks.
The rest is a shapeless mass of lava.
The road is open, but at the same time it is under construction, expanding and branching out.Samuel Sánchez
"It's tough," Leal says.
“He imagines that he has a house, that the land is that of a house that was on the edge of this road that we just reopened.
But everything has disappeared.
And we can't put a hydrant where there's nothing but rocks.
Based on what do I bring the water to this man?
The new road has also allowed the rehabilitation works of the Las Manchas cemetery to be accelerated, which was also affected by the flow.
Part of the cemetery was buried.
That is why it is not uncommon to find flowers in the lava, deposited by relatives in the place where it is assumed that, under many meters of rock, the remains of their dead rest.
One area was hastily cleared, with relatives summoned at the rate of five a day to be present when the remains were moved to safer niches.
There is another part that was saved.
That he escaped, as they say in La Palma.
Ultimately, the Las Manchas cemetery is a kind of mirror of what happened throughout the Aridane Valley: part was buried, part was saved, part had to be moved.
Mauro Pérez, whose house has been converted into an island house, was saved from the lava, but was practically isolated.
Samuel Sanchez
In that sinister lottery, Mauro Pérez, a 68-year-old retiree, was hit with heads.
The lava flow stopped a meter from his house.
He, who still lives for rent, but who is already thinking of moving in with his wife because his house has had electricity and water for days, does not fully explain the reason for his fate.
There must be physical reasons.
But Mauro shrugs.
“I don't know whether to believe in God”, he murmurs, still puzzled, when he sees the wall of black rocks that, finally, spared the life of his house.
Only his: his neighbors did not have the same fortune.
In addition, his avocado orchard was buried, as well as the shack where he kept tools and fertilizers.
Some banana trees with which he thought to round out his retirement also disappeared.
But his house, small, square, came out unscathed,
with a couple of cracks in the ceiling as the only scar.
From one of its windows, he sees the famous road in the background and, further on, a landscape of yellow and blue bulldozers working hard to open a new road.
There are clearings, pipes, water drums and a power line made of sticks, with old poles.
In the future, this road will connect Mauro's house with that of other more distant neighbors who, due to the whims of the volcano, were also saved and who also seem like shipwrecked in the middle of the earth.
Aerial view of the road that saves the lava flow from the La Palma volcano.
Samuel Sanchez
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