In ancient times, when a volcano erupted, we calmed it down with sacrifices.
Now, instead of the volcano, we calm ourselves with pills.
The volcano has not changed its strategy;
us, yes.
I noticed this in a pharmacy in Los Llanos de Aridane, on the Canary Island of La Palma, when I noticed that the two people who preceded me had prescriptions for Lexatin.
I had gone to buy some plasters, but I also ordered a mouthwash and a toothbrush that I didn't need to start a conversation with the pharmacist.
"During the eruption," he told me, "sleeping pills were used because there was no way to sleep."
After her, the sale of anxiolytics has increased.
A cousin of hers, she adds right away, left home “with just what she was wearing”.
This expression, that of “going out with what is on”, is often heard.
It gives the impression, after talking with each other, that a standard, consensual story has been established, which hides, due to its repetition, the magnitude of the tragedy.
“Going out with your clothes on”, if you think about it, is terrifying, especially if you can't get back in, which is what happened on numerous occasions.
—This street is in the center of Los Llanos —continues the pharmacist— and until recently it was filled to the brim with ashes.
We had to go out with protective glasses, masks and umbrellas.
-Umbrella?
-missed me.
"Yes, for the ashes."
Her hair didn't last clean at all.
The ash does not dirty, but it accumulates in the hair.
The shower tray was black.
I retain in my memory, because it is surreal, the image of people with umbrellas under a rain of solid black drops.
The Band-Aids were because the shoe had scratched my left foot and the next day I had to walk on rough ground.
He had an appointment with Felipa Guzmán Reyes, deputy director of the Caldera de Taburiente National Park, located north of La Palma, and the place where just two million years ago this pre-adolescent island began to form that occasionally gives a scare.
The last ones of which memory is kept are, successively, that of the San Antonio volcano, in 1677;
that of San Juan, in 1941;
that of Teneguía, in 1971, and that of Cumbre Vieja, just yesterday, in September 2021.
A house near the crater of Cumbre Vieja half buried by volcanic ash.James Rajotte
It is, in short, an island in formation, an island that from time to time opens its flesh here or there to continue giving birth to itself.
Palm students are taught that their land is in the shape of a heart, and it is true, but also, we thought, of an inverted tear, and now we were to the north, that is, in the thick area of the tear, the place where the island emerged from the depths of the ocean, whose floor is 4,000 meters deep.
In that thick part of the tear there is a gigantic pot known as the Caldera de Taburiente on whose inner wall paths have been opened, at different heights, that allow you to walk through it.
Felipa Guzmán and I were walking along one of those inner paths in the upper part of the caldera while James Rajotte, the photographer,
That enormous depression in the land (it was dizzying to look down, but also up) was the result of the displacement of the original volcanic building molded by the water.
The pot appears broken by the southwest wall giving rise to a formidable ravine, known as the Angustias, through which the waters that are not collected before or that are left over reach the sea at the height of the town of Tazacorte.
The ravine is therefore also the product of erosion caused by water at the beginning of time on this island of 708 square kilometers, a maximum height of 2,426 meters (the Roque de los Muchachos) and a population of 83,000 inhabitants (about 117 per square kilometer).
This is an area little affected by the recent eruption of Cumbre Vieja, but impossible to avoid when origins matter.
It's good, I think
So, the deputy director of the park tells:
—The day that Cumbre Vieja exploded was Sunday [September 19] and I was at my mother's house.
There was a lot of excitement because we had never seen a volcano erupt, something that, as they had announced, would happen at any moment.
We were elated.
My mother, who had lived through 1949 and 1971, said: "How ignorant my children are."
When it exploded, we got in the car and got as close as we could.
Spikes of fire protruded from the fissure like those on the crown of the Statue of Liberty.
We were fascinated.
But the elders warned: "Oh, the lava is going to swallow the farm of so-and-so, who has worked so hard!".
The volcano has that double aspect: something that seems to come from beyond, although it comes from the deepest, comes from within, not from outside.
It's a magical thing until you see it go down and down and down and it goes burying houses, lands,
Projects.
We went from magic to tragedy in no time.
There were people who had to run away, with their clothes on (“go out with their clothes on”, once again).
As we progress along the inner rim of the gigantic crater, the day darkens, so that the ravines, precipices, and vegetation-covered wrinkles that form the walls of the pot become, without losing their grandeur, as menacing as a tortured landscape. .
The only thing missing is a romantic poet throwing himself off the cliff with his hair in the wind.
It's scary to imagine the fall.
At that moment, Felipa Guzmán, 48, married with one child, says:
-My husband had 6,000 square meters on the coast and the lava took everything.
We grew avocados.
We had a swimming pool and the foundations were already laid to build the house.
The lava washed away half of the farm and then the other half.
My husband was 10 days that he was not able to locate.
Before the eruption he went every afternoon to work on the farm, it was his life, and now the afternoons...
I insist: one does not know what causes more vertigo, whether to look up, where there are peaks that form an immense ridge, more than 2,000 meters high (we are about 1,000 meters), or down, through one of whose grooves I imagine rolling into the abyss.
I've lost a bit of my sense of direction, I couldn't tell where north is, not even north of myself.
I feel like a tiny ant running over the face of a sleeping old man, an old man so full of folds and wrinkles that the poor ant doesn't know if he's near the old man's mouth, eyelid or eyebrows.
La Cumbrecita, in the Caldera de Taburiente National Park.
james rajotte
Felipe says:
“My husband thinks we can still get it back, that we could kick up the lava…
"Like a scab," I add, "because lava looks a bit like that, like the scab from the wounds we made on our knees when we were little, although it also reminds us, due to its irregular appearance, of a melanoma, one of those ugly ugly warts, which evolve badly.
"As if it were a scab," she confirms.
The depression in which we find ourselves is covered with pines because the pine is endemic to this area.
The Canarian pine has evolved in such a way that it resists extremely high temperatures.
The bark and leaves are burned, but inside it is still alive and, although it seems dead, shoots immediately begin to sprout.
The undergrowth is of considerable richness: there is pampillo, broom, espirradera, blue tajinaste, cabezote, white sage, thyme, rabbit grass, cliff cabbage, lettuce, violet, red bejeque... Not that one knows all these varieties, but their mere enumeration, and even without distinguishing one from the other, pleases his ear and takes the drama out of the landscape.
As for the fauna, there are butterflies, beetles, common chiffchaffs, bumblebees, spiders, Madeira bats, grasshoppers, sparrowhawks, dragonflies, rock pigeons, kestrels, bugs,
lizards, owls, wrens… A whole world whose eyes lie in wait for us, I suppose, from the moss, the rocks, the cracks, the bark of the trees, the folds of the ground.
Suddenly I hear a soft, distant sound, like the vibration of a stringed instrument.
I suppose it is one of the ways in which silence manifests itself.
This area of the island is intact, although it received some ashes on days when the wind blew north, which was not normal, as it usually blows south.
Even so, the person in charge of the park says:
I suppose it is one of the ways in which silence manifests itself.
This area of the island is intact, although it received some ashes on days when the wind blew north, which was not normal, as it usually blows south.
Even so, the person in charge of the park says:
I suppose it is one of the ways in which silence manifests itself.
This area of the island is intact, although it received some ashes on days when the wind blew north, which was not normal, as it usually blows south.
Even so, the person in charge of the park says:
—I noticed that the ashes bothered some plants.
The animals moved differently because the species they fed on had ashes.
They jumped the ravine and went north.
Look, on those cliffs nest falcons, kestrels...
The fact of calling the smallest emissions of the volcano “ash” generates misunderstandings.
For most people, ash is that soft powder, resulting from combustion, that dissolves between the fingers.
But volcano "ashes," no matter how big, even if it's the size of a grain of sand, are as hard as iron filings.
Pure shrapnel, finally.
If you put it in your mouth, it tastes like metal.
We arrived walking to the viewpoint of the Cumbrecita, at about 1,300 meters.
From here the landscape is more amazing, if possible.
It resembles, due to its atrocious beauty, that of a tormented conscience, only that, instead of being composed of obsessive ideas, it is full of wild nature capable of surviving in ravines, in fissures, in precipices, and even in the mere rock, such as the pimpinella, the silene itálica, the bejeque tabaquero, the carlina falcate, the arabis caucasica…, all with apparently fragile stems and leaves, although with a moving capacity for survival.
Felipa says that a centimeter of soil from the original magma takes hundreds of years to become cultivable.
The lava has to decompose.
The greater the erosion produced by rain and wind, the better.
Weathered lava, worked by water and by wind and by bacteria and microorganisms in general, becomes what we laymen call "earth", and which is nothing other than soil, the substratum that subsequently They colonize plants and then animals.
She explains that "low electrical conductivity water," like the one given here, is excellent for crops.
I retain this phrase, that of "low electrical conductivity water", not because I understand it, but because it sounds good.
I like.
And adds:
—Before, people would make a hole in the lava, fill it with earth and grow crops because lava is very rich in nutrients.
The road becomes more aggressive now, rougher, so I stop for a moment to check that the Band-Aid on my foot is still in place.
A bird sings (another manifestation of silence) but I am not able to identify it.
There are choughs, canaries, swifts, ravens, bluebirds...
The space is both oppressive and liberating, with tall, vertical walls on one side and emptiness on the other.
—We are so ephemeral in relation to geological times… —felipa reflects—.
My mother has experienced three eruptions, the one in 1949, the one in 1971, and now she is here.
She sometimes she tried to remember what was under the lava.
I say to myself: "Here was this store, here was the house of so-and-so or so-and-so."
In my imagination, I make the route I used to take to go to our farm.
You had learned the landscape and now… A colleague told me that the day the lava arrived at her house, she was lying down, waiting for it.
She practically had the volcano at home.
The bewilderment is… People who have jobs leave work and don't know where to go or what to do.
Maybe you have to get used to living in an apartment when you have never lived in an apartment, or in a hotel, as many evacuees from areas where there are gases continue.
Property is highly valued here because it comes from people who went to Cuba and came back with money that they invested on the island.
My mother has some properties that she inherited from her father.
She says that if we ever sell them he will appear to us at night.
The territory is very small and people are very attached to it.
And says:
'The noise was horrible, like you were in the middle of an airport runway.
And, from time to time, an explosion.
The explosions... the tremor...
I retain the term “tremor” like the entomologist who fixes on the cork, after piercing it with a pin, a singular butterfly.
Tremor, what a beautiful word to designate the tremor that comes from the interior of the Earth or from the depths of oneself, from the magma from which the natural world or the subconscious is made.
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Technicians work near the Cumbre Vieja crater.James Rajotte
We have left the national park, the place where this very young island was born, still unborn, to get off in Felipa Guzmán's car to the south in order to see and touch and step on, if possible, one of those coladas that so many times we saw on TV.
And now we are in front of it, in front of a porous wart, taller than us, in front of that fleshy excrescence, of hard and black meat and sharp and sharp and irregular, in front of the scum, ideal as a refuge for all kinds of reptiles.
Common place that comes to mind: lunar landscape.
It shudders to think that under here there were houses, kitchens, pans, televisions, bedding sets, fitted wardrobes, children's toys in the hallway, colored pencils, photo albums, toothbrushes, books, radios, hair dryers. .
There is a countryman at the door of a house attached to the wall of the dump, a house that the lava has brushed past.
When she sees me approaching with the notebook and pen, she makes a denial gesture with her hand, accompanied by a disgusted expression.
"I don't give interviews," he says.
"You narrowly escaped," I say.
"Nearly," he concedes politely.
And since I'm still there, pretending to take notes, he adds:
—There, just a few meters away, there were houses.
Some have been saved, but have remained isolated.
There is no way to get there.
- And what's your name?
-I ask.
"I'm not telling you," he replies.
We climb to the top of the lava crust, to the top of the skin tumor that has appeared in the landscape, to the top of the ugly ugly wart.
The ground is very sharp.
Felipa warns referring to the ashes:
—Clean, you leave the floor clean, well, that's it.
But the wind comes again, the rain comes and we start again.
From there, we descend to an area of banana plantations where the streets appear flanked by the towering walls of the fabrics that cover the plantations.
It is like a rare neighborhood, a green neighborhood that the lava has respected, although the ashes have dirty the greenhouses.
I look through one of the holes in these canvas walls and notice that the ground is also black due to the abundance of all that mineral shrapnel.
Bananas, with their strange shapes, look like prehistoric animals trapped in a dark world: the world that must have been left after the impact of the giant meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs.
We ascend on foot the mountain of La Laguna, from which the crater of the volcano can be seen perfectly, in the shape of a horseshoe, in the shape of a hole, a mouth, an orifice, an eyelet.
Felipa says that the mountain on which that smoking mouth stands did not exist, it was not there.
"What was there then?"
-I ask.
—The slope that went into the valley.
It was a valley.
The strangeness with which he speaks is that of someone who did not recognize his own face in the mirror.
Felipa Guzmán, Deputy Director of the Caldera de Taburiente National Park.
james rajotte
"At first," he adds, "only a tongue of fire came down, then they multiplied.
The mountain on the right is that of Todoque, which disappeared under the lava.
From this place you can see, in effect, the great black spot that from the base of the volcano descends towards the sea.
"There were people," he says, "who were taken to the doors of the houses."
Those who had time, of course.
I try to remember what the road that led to Puerto Naos was like.
I don't want to forget.
The observatory is addictive because from it the magnitude of the tragedy can be seen with the clarity with which we could observe it on a three-dimensional map.
It seems simultaneously a representation of reality and the reality represented.
Two days later the photographer and I would return, claimed by this stupefying vision, accompanied by Miguel Ángel Morcuende, 67, technical director of the Special Plan for Civil Protection and Emergency Attention due to volcanic risk.
He speaks of exhausting months, of 16-hour days with a high adrenaline level, high, to be able to endure.
He says that they had a protection plan that worked, but that later decisions had to be made according to the movements of the volcano, which were unpredictable.
—It is the first time —he adds— that a volcano erupts in a conurbation in Europe.
Etna is alive, but there are no dwellings around it.
But here there was no volcano, this mass did not exist —he says pointing to the smoky mountain.
Morcuende coordinated more than 700 people who formed a multidisciplinary team that ranged from civil guards to doctors, as well as experts in forest fires, volunteers, geologists, physicists, the Red Cross, members of the UME, Cabildo infrastructure, firefighters from the different islands in addition to those of La Palma and volunteers who came from the Peninsula.
—I moved —he points out— between the advanced command post and the meetings with the Scientific Committee and with the Steering Committee, which was the one that made the decisions.
Carmen López, director of the Central Geophysical Observatory.
james rajotte
"But the emergency treatment has been a success," I say.
“In my opinion, yes,” he concedes, “within the disaster, of course.
"Would you change anything if you had the opportunity to go back to the beginning?"
-I ask.
"I'm not going to tell you that," he replies.
But of course we have to change things in the Special Plan, we have to refine it.
And well, there we are again, at the top of the La Laguna mountain, with the Todoque mountain on our right.
Today it's rainy.
It rains and rains and there we continue under the downpour, fascinated by the horseshoe-shaped crater that does not stop expelling smoke.
—The volcanic edifice —says Morcuende— was unstable.
It was constantly collapsing and rebuilding itself, causing new fissures to open as the lava sought out the weakest point in the crust.
This gave rise to the appearance of several lava flows that then all moved towards the flank of the newly created volcano, forming that gigantic black spot that would later divide into arms.
It gives the impression, in fact, that the newly erupted volcano has spewed black slime like the wing of a raven.
The northern arm of the slime destroyed half of the nucleus of La Laguna.
The southern flow reached the lighthouse of La Bombilla, destroying the center of Todoque in its path and affecting some 1,400 people.
We also appreciate a central body.
Between these three arms under which houses and crops and customs have been buried, groups of houses or greenhouses respected by the laundry, although completely inaccessible, can be distinguished here and there.
We talk about the north, central and south lava flows to understand each other, to simplify, since it was not uncommon for one lava flow to be mounted on top of another.
There are, finally, washes upon washes in a disorder that is difficult to understand.
Close to where we are simultaneously contemplating the map of reality and reality itself, a car is stopped, inside which we see a couple with their gaze lost in the landscape (or in the anti-landscape), perhaps trying to locate the place Exactly where they had their house.
The windshield wiper blades go from one side to the other intermittently revealing their serious faces, like those who in funeral homes contemplate the corpse on the other side of the glass.
—The cores of La Bombilla and Puerto Naos —explains Morcuende pointing to them— continue to be dislodged by the gases.
There is accumulation of carbon dioxide and, to a lesser extent, monoxide.
The dioxide weighs more than the air, so it displaces the oxygen and the atmosphere is no longer breathable, you have to go.
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T-shirts for sale in a church in the town of Tajuya.James Rajotte
Calima, which peninsulars confuse with fog, is a kind of mist made up of sand, dust, ashes and salts in suspension.
It occurs frequently in the Canary Islands during the winter due to the winds coming from the Sahara.
It reduces visibility more or less, depending on the degree of concentration of the particles, and it is bad for physical health, because it really makes breathing difficult, and for mental health, because it forces you to imagine that you are not breathing well.
Today, which has dawned with haze, we have met at three in the afternoon with Carmen López and a group of technicians from the National Geographic Institute (IGN) in order to get closer to the upper part of Cabeza de Vaca, a privileged spot for observing of the volcano.
Carmen is the director of the IGN's Central Geophysical Observatory.
She has summoned us to the so-called Refugio de El Pilar, where we left the cars, to get on the 4 × 4 of the institute, since the thickness of the ashes does not allow us to get there in any other way.
We shot on a completely black and soft ground, in front of a mountain landscape also black on which the silhouettes of the black trees are cut out, blurred by the haze.
So much blackness, added to the poor visibility, gives the ravines that open up to our eyes the appearance of one of the circles of hell.
Carmen Lopez explains:
—The volcano is in post-eruptive phase, which does not mean that the magmatic process has finished.
Volcanic islands have three phases: youth, maturity and dismantling.
In youth, the contribution of materials is stronger than erosion, and in the final stage, erosion prevails over the contribution.
We have a surveillance network to identify precursor phenomena, forecast their evolution and determine the scenarios of the different dangers before they occur, communicating them to Civil Protection so that they can respond with the appropriate mitigation measures.
"And when did this start?"
-I ask.
—The early precursors, in this case, were low-magnitude seismic swarms that have been going on since 2017. There will still be residual seismicity and gas emissions during the rebalancing and cooling trend.
It precedes the eruption, a process that can begin months or years before during which pressurized magma accumulates in the place where the eruption will take place.
We are now at the point of stabilization that can last for years.
During that time there may be earthquakes.
There is a remaining activity.
Beneath the ashes on which we walked, there was a forest track before the disaster.
"Fire fell here," says Carmen López.
The ravens were starving.
Look at the volcano —she adds pointing to its mouth—, the yellowish colors are due to the sulfur;
the whites, by the carbonate;
the reddish ones, by the iron.
We get out of the cars, which cannot go any further, and we walk with difficulty over the ashes until we are about 400 meters from the mouth and at the same height.
Despite the haze, we perfectly recognize the lips of the crater, adorned by the yellow, white and reddish ones that Carmen was talking about.
From between those lips a permanent column of smoke comes out, as if a giant were smoking inside.
Enrique Alonso, from the Volcanic Surveillance team (left), and technician Cecilio Rodríguez, near the Cumbre Vieja crater.
james rajotte
The general impression is that of finding ourselves in another world for which we cannot find effective analogies.
The set refers more to the universe of dreams than to that of wakefulness.
We are all awake, very awake, but inside a very deep sleep.
I hear Carmen López say:
—Primero el suelo empieza a fisurar y luego se eleva.
El suelo de cenizas no es completamente uniforme, pues aparecen aquí y allá, rompiendo esa uniformidad, rocas del tamaño de un balón, incluso más grandes, denominadas “bombas”. Y es que los piroplastos emitidos por el volcán se subdividen, según su tamaño y morfología, en cenizas, lapilli, bombas y escoria. En este paisaje, además de las cenizas y el lapilli, abundan las bombas, que salían despedidas con una fuerza tal que se llegaron a encontrar a un kilómetro de distancia.
De vez en cuando, en medio de la densidad de la calima, se abre un agujero por el que penetra el sol. Sin embargo, nuestras sombras no se reflejan en el suelo porque el suelo es negro, igual que la sombra. Esa ausencia me trae a la memoria aquella novela en la que un hombre vende su sombra al diablo convencido de hacer un gran negocio. Pronto descubrirá con horror que se puede vivir sin otras cosas, pero no sin sombra. El propio Peter Pan, que la pierde al comienzo del relato, ha de cosérsela a los pies para no extraviar algo tan preciado, al tiempo que simbólico.
Pues allí nos hallábamos un grupo de seis o siete personas expuestas a los peligros morales de no arrastrar o de no ser arrastrados por la sombra.
—Hay unos nueve puntos de emisión funcionando de forma intermitente —dice Carmen López—, pues esto ha sido una emisión fisural, no como la del Teide. La morfología del edificio volcánico cambiaba constantemente: sumaba y restaba. Finalmente ha sumado más.
El sol cae como un disco de plata en medio de la calima y arrecia el frío debido a la altura a la que nos encontramos y a una brisa que ha empezado a soplar desde alguna de las partes del sueño. James, el fotógrafo, se aleja siguiendo el dibujo de lo que en su día debió de ser un angosto camino forestal y su figura parece la de un fantasma en medio de la bruma. Yo permanezco junto a Carmen, que me describe con paciencia infinita las distintas capas de las que está compuesta la Tierra. Nosotros, usted, lector, y yo, nos hallamos sobre la corteza, que es la parte más exterior y rígida y cuyo espesor varía según nos refiramos a zonas montañosas o al fondo del mar. En todo caso, es fina comparada con el manto o magma, que es la capa que viene a continuación y que es semisólida debido a las altas temperaturas de allá abajo. Ocurre en esta capa lo que en una olla de agua puesta a hervir: que el agua caliente del fondo sube y la de la superficie baja, provocando corrientes convectivas que mueven las placas litosféricas, que, como ya hemos dicho, son rígidas.
Esta imagen del magma actuando sobre la corteza y provocando fenómenos volcánicos capaces de crear islas como esta en la que nos hallamos me obsesiona, porque me recuerda al subconsciente buscando, a través de manifestaciones como el sueño y el lapsus, fisuras por las que llegar al mundo consciente.
Estoy pensando en ello en medio de aquel paisaje fantasmagórico cuando tropiezo con Enrique Alonso, una de las personas que nos han acompañado, ingeniero en geodesia. Me vuelve a explicar, a petición propia, lo que me acaba de exponer Carmen López. No es que no me fíe, sino que quiero escucharlo otra vez, como el que vuelve obsesivamente al lugar del crimen. Mientras habla de las corrientes convectivas del magma, pongo cara de no entender, que es una cara que me sale de forma natural en las situaciones que requieren un poco de talento porque soy un poco duro de mollera.
—Dentro del manto —dice— hay diferentes temperaturas, lo que provoca la aparición de corrientes convectivas. El manto más profundo sube y, si hay mucha presión, rompe las zonas más débiles de la corteza y sale. Y eso que sale es lo que llamamos magma, que puede ser más denso o menos denso en función de la cantidad de sílice que arrastre. Aquí, unos días salía más denso y otros menos denso.
—Ya —digo porque creo haberlo entendido, pero debo de seguir involuntariamente con la expresión contraria, por lo que Enrique Alonso continúa:
—La corteza terrestre está compuesta por placas tectónicas que flotan y se deslizan sobre el manto, de manera que chocan, se tocan, se rozan. Nosotros, ahora, estamos sobre la placa tectónica africana. La Península se halla sobre la euroasiática.
Una calle de la localidad de Tajuya alcanzada por la colada de lava. Han comenzado las tareas de limpieza y de construcción de una nueva carretera.James Rajotte
—Ya —repito sin cambiar mi expresión de idiota, que a veces da buenos resultados.
—Imagínate —continúa él armado de paciencia didáctica— un tazón de natillas.
—Lo tengo —digo.
—Si pones una galleta encima, la galleta flota y se desplaza.
—De acuerdo —apunto.
—Si el tazón de natillas fuera muy grande y hubiera muchas galletas, todas se desplazarían y chocarían entre sí, se rozarían. Pues esa es un poco la relación entre la corteza terrestre y el magma.
La cara de idiota, en los momentos adecuados, consigue estos hallazgos analógicos, créanme. Debo a esta cara todo lo que sé porque la gente cree, con razón, que ha de repetirme las cosas siete veces.
Asombra pensar que hubo una época en la que la Tierra no tenía corteza, pues era puro gas, como hay una época del embrión humano en la que aún no ha aparecido la piel o en la que no se han formado sus diferentes capas, mostrándose como un papel de fumar en el que se transparentan los capilares y los vasos. Quiere uno imaginar que hubo semejanzas entre la formación de la Tierra y la del cuerpo humano.
Enrique Alonso es uno más del equipo de Vigilancia Volcánica formado por 43 personas entre las que hay físicos, matemáticos, químicos, ingenieros de Telecomunicaciones, ingenieros electrónicos y expertos en geodesia, entre otros. Significa que tienen al volcán vigiladísimo y desde cualquier punto de vista posible. La unidad se creó en 2007 y a los cuatro años, en 2011, sobrevino la erupción de El Hierro.
Tres o cuatro integrantes de ese equipo multidisciplinar con el que hemos llegado a este punto se alejan ahora en dirección al volcán ataviados con mascarillas, gafas y trajes especiales de protección, pues van a llegar al borde mismo del cráter para tomar nota de sus emisiones. Sus cuerpos se van desvaneciendo entre la calima como las materias solubles desaparecen en el agua. La brisa trae olor a ácido sulfúrico y a clorhídrico, que es el olor característico de los huevos podridos.
Es, pues, la hora de volver.
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Valentina Fontecha es la directora del hotel Benahoare, situado en Los Llanos de Aridane, donde nos hospedamos. Perdió la casa a los tres días de la erupción.
—El volcán —dice— surgió prácticamente de mi jardín, pues vivíamos a 500 metros. No tuvieron que avisarnos. Salimos corriendo al ver el panorama. Nunca habíamos estado en una situación semejante, no sabíamos qué hacer. No éramos conscientes de vivir en una zona volcánica. Llevábamos varios días de terremotos. No se podía estar. Yo tengo perros y estaban inquietos. Avisaban. Le dije a mi marido: “Recogemos la autocaravana y nos vamos”. No nos dio tiempo a recoger más. Era domingo. Mucha gente que había salido a pasear ya no pudo volver. Todo lo que llevaban consigo era el bolso. A los 10 minutos de salir, volvimos la cabeza y vimos la explosión. Dijo mi marido: “Menos mal que te hemos hecho caso”. Durante los dos primeros días, la lava rodeó la casa. Al tercero se la comió.
Igual que ver un desastre a cámara lenta, pienso.
—Menos mal que teníamos contratado un seguro —añade—. La gente que no lo tenía está más desamparada. Llevábamos 15 años allí… Mis gallinas, mis frutales.
—¿Qué hiciste con las gallinas?
—Las solté. Saqué los papeles, las escrituras. No tengo hijos, no soy muy materialista. También tenía perros enterrados a los que habíamos querido mucho.
Atiende una llamada del teléfono. Luego continúa:
—Yo nunca he llamado al volcán cabrón…
Vuelve a atender otra llamada. Cuelga.
—Aquí empezaron a cancelar todas las reservas porque este es un hotel al que vienen muchos senderistas alemanes y austriacos. Pasamos de alojar a los senderistas a llenar el hotel de periodistas. Desde la habitación que ocupas tú, la 26, se veía la erupción. Así que desde el punto de vista del trabajo nosotros seguíamos igual, trabajando, aunque había camareros o camareras que habían perdido su casa.
—¿Dónde vives ahora?
—En la autocaravana en la que me escapé. Tuve esa suerte. Nos movemos de un lado a otro en función del clima y del movimiento de las cenizas. Hemos cobrado ya del consorcio de seguros, pero comprar algo ahora es bastante complicado, ha subido todo mucho. Lo peor es la gente cuya casa ha quedado en pie, pero no tienen acceso a ella y no les pagan porque la casa está intacta. Hay gente que tiene media vivienda inundada por la lava y media que no. Los peritos dicen: “Ya veremos”. Aquí, lo que más falta hace ahora son notarios y psicólogos.
¿En ese orden?, me pregunto.
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Un barco en la zona de Las Manchas.James Rajotte
María del Mar Falcón es recepcionista en el Museo Arqueológico de Los Llanos. Dice que ella, de forma personal, no está afectada, pero luego, paradójicamente, añade que se encuentra agotada física y mentalmente.
—Las cenizas, los ruidos, los gases, tener que dejar a los niños en casa… —enumera lentamente—. El humo de ahora es por la desgasificación, pero Cumbre Vieja es una cordillera de volcanes con actividad. A ver qué dicen los vulcanólogos. La zona de la costa es la que está más vigilada, por los gases. El volcán de Cumbre Vieja era como un niño ruin que por el día estaba tranquilo y por la noche decía aquí estoy yo. No se podía dormir de los temblores, del ruido…, temblaban las cristaleras, las ventanas, las vitrinas de las casas. En la zona sur se notaba más, claro.
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Hay zonas que, sin sufrir el peso de la lava, han quedado enterradas en las cenizas. Tal ocurre en Las Manchas, perteneciente a los municipios de El Paso y de Los Llanos de Aridane, por donde el fotógrafo y yo deambulamos (él en busca de una imagen fotográfica, yo en busca de una imagen retórica), sin saber si debajo de nuestros zapatos hay tierra o casas. El volcán humea, quizá vapor de agua, quizá los gases de la digestión. Sobre el suelo negro, a unos metros, se aprecia un agujero al que nos acercamos para descubrir a través de él, sorpresivamente, una cocina en la que todo está en su sitio, aunque ennegrecido: vemos la pila, los cacharros de loza, los estantes con las botellas de aceite y de vinagre, los botes de cristal con el arroz, las judías, las especias, el aparador con los platos y los vasos… El resto de la casa ha quedado cubierto por las cenizas; el tejado, excepto en esta parte, debe de haber resistido. Nos alejamos con cuidado por miedo a que se abra otro agujero y acabemos en el salón de la vivienda o en uno de los dormitorios.
Hay personas sobre los tejados que han quedado a la vista revisando las estructuras de los edificios, a veces en compañía de los peritos de las casas de seguros.
Mires donde mires, todo es ruina y desolación de color negro.
Aparece en la ventana de una de las casas una mujer limpiando las cenizas del alféizar con un aspirador. Tras apagar el aparato, me cuenta que la noche anterior a la explosión había luna llena.
—Dije a mis hijos: “Hoy revienta el volcán, pero ojalá que lo haga de día”. Las ventanas llevaban cuatro días temblando. La casa quedó cubierta hasta aquí, hasta el segundo piso. Tuvimos que entrar por la ventana.
—¿A qué huele hoy? —le pregunto.
—A azufre —responde—, pero mejor que huela, o eso dicen. Nosotros —añade mirando al infinito— no heredamos nada. Todo lo hicimos trabajando y ahora ya ve…
I look around and everything is black, everything dark.
James, the photographer, provides me with the rhetorical image I was after since I set foot on the island:
—This landscape is like the negative of a snow season photograph.
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