An 89-year-old Spaniard returns to Pamplona after six months in Ukraine in the middle of the war: "I was very ill because I didn't know what was happening"

María Cayetana Lorenzo —

—, 89, rests on the sofa clinging to her cane.

She is a petite woman, who needs her grandchildren to move around her daughter's chalet in Pamplona, ​​and who bursts into tears when she mentions

.

Jesús Sarasa Lorenzo, “the child of his eyes”, emigrated to Ukraine together with his wife, of that nationality, in April 2021. Maruja, a widow, traveled with them.

Since then, the three of them lived in a small town near Vinnytsia, about 300 kilometers southeast of kyiv.

But a heart attack took Sarasa at the end of May.

And the odyssey began for Maruja and her family to get her to return to Spain.

“I was very bad because I didn't know what was happening.

She saw the planes drop the bombs.

When I saw my daughter, I was happy”, she recalls with difficulty, the octogenarian from the capital of Navarra, where she arrived last week after residing for six months in a country at war.

Half the time, she alone with her daughter-in-law.

Neither Sarasa nor her mother embarked on the convoys that the Government provided to the Spanish residents in Ukraine at the end of February, when Russia began the military offensive, to escape the country.

They did not think that the war would intensify.

Also, Maruja broke her hip.

“They had to operate on her in the middle of the conflict,” Mónica Sarasa, 52-year-old daughter of Maruja, says today.

“I communicated with my brother by video call daily.

He couldn't even watch the news."

Maruja's daughter shows the photos and videos that she took in the Ukraine and that she accumulates in a mobile phone album under the title of

.

After the closure of the embassy in kyiv, and the rescue of the hundred compatriots who landed in Barajas on February 28, Foreign Affairs informed the Spaniards who were still in the country that, if they wanted to return, they would have to do so on their own. media.

According to ministry sources, the human cost of the troops participating in a possible rescue would be much higher than that of removing the trapped.

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The two Spaniards who have helped other Spaniards flee from the war in Ukraine

Jesús and Maruja remained in their Ukrainian home until last May.

On the 29th of that month, Mónica received the fateful call from her sister-in-law: Jesús had died of a heart attack.

He was 59 years old.

“It was a double pain.

Because of the death of my brother and because my mother was alone there, ”Mónica barely remembers in the garden of her house.

It is the same place where they celebrated a funeral with the rest of the family, among whom were the two sons of Jesus, the fruit of a previous marriage.

After contacting Foreign Affairs, Maruja's relatives asked for help from the NGO Help to Ukraine, a non-profit association that since March has helped other Spaniards leave the country.

Also, dozens of Ukrainians.

"They have been angels to me," repeats Maruja's daughter.

The delicate state of health in which her mother was found required a special vehicle for her transfer.

“She had to be taken out of Ukraine by ambulance.

And we needed her daughter to enter the country to be with her, to accompany her”, explains Javier Fernández, founder of Help to Ukraine.

While preparing the rescue, Maruja has had to spend days with the wife of her deceased son and her family.

Only her daughter-in-law spoke Spanish and she communicated with her daughter by phone.

"Every time I saw her worse," Monica confesses.

Finally, the operation became available two weeks ago.

On August 17, she flew from Madrid to Poland.

"She was scared, she had never considered going," says Monica.

Monica traveled with her nephew, Mikel, son of her brother Jesus, who had to wait at the Polish border.

She and a Help to Ukraine collaborator, Florín Boneta, entered the country by car.

“The fear dissolved as we crossed.

I only thought about meeting my mother.

I was impressed by the number of trucks that were crossing the border.

Also the

and the military weapons that were in Lviv”, he continues.

They spent the night in this city and continued tirelessly to Lipovets, the town where Maruja lived, whose location is outside of direct attacks.

After a drive through a bumpy road, Monica arrived at the house, which she recognized from the photos and videos she had exchanged with her brother before her death.

She ran out of the car and merged into a hug with her mother, who was waiting inside her home.

Mónica Sarasa, Maruja Lorenzo, the two Ukrainian doctors and Florín Boneta, during the trip.

Two doctors guarded Maruja in an ambulance.

Behind, Mónica and Florín followed the vehicle back to the border, with Maruja's belongings, which she held at all times the cane that her son gave her.

They did the tour without stopping.

"I empathized a lot with the people of Ukraine," Monica recalls about the trip.

“I felt sorry for what could happen to this country.

To think that everything can fall apart...”.

Thanks to a special permit, they reached Poland after avoiding long queues at the border.

Mikel was waiting for them there to return to Spain with his aunt and his grandmother.

"Now I can rest easy with my family," Maruja says today, relieved, in the garden of her daughter Mónica's home.

"I have a knot here," she adds as she clutches a crucifix around her neck and remembers her son.

Monica's old office,

A podiatrist by profession, it is now Maruja's room.

Today she enjoys her grandchildren, her great-granddaughter.

And also from Pamplona.

Here she affirms today emphatically: “I have lived through two wars”.

The Spanish civil war and the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.

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