Sarah crossed the Strait by ferry for the fourth time on April 11 to join the red fruit campaign in Huelva.
She was part of the penultimate contingent of seasonal workers originally hired that has landed in Huelva.
She, along with 199 other Moroccan women, took the ship from Tangier and docked late at night and late at the port of Algeciras (Cádiz).
Less than a month later, on May 1, Sarah boarded a bus for what would be her last trip.
At 6.25 in the morning she lost her life when she was going with 40 other colleagues to pick the strawberries from San Juan del Puerto to the greenhouses that cover the fields between Almonte and El Rocío, in the province of Huelva.
The night has been long in the old hostel in San Juan del Puerto that Surexport, the company for which the injured day laborers work, has set up as a shelter for agricultural campaigns.
A mixture of fatigue, nerves and shock dominates the mood of the 22 temporary workers who were slightly injured and who returned from hospitals and health centers to that house throughout Monday.
“None of them are in a position to speak and now they are trying to assimilate what happened,” explains Charo Miranda, coordinator of the Red Cross in Huelva, the organization that regularly collaborates with Surexport and that is providing them with psychological help and longer-term assistance.
The team is made up of psychologists, a social worker and a mediator.
"They are in personal mourning and very distressed," adds Miranda.
The facilities of the Surexport company, on Tuesday.
Alejandro Ruesga
Throughout Tuesday, eight other colleagues have been arriving in San Juan del Puerto who have been discharged.
Of the 40 wounded, 9 are still admitted to different hospitals in Huelva and Seville.
Three of them are serious, but stable, according to the statement from the Health Department of the Junta de Andalucía.
All will receive the medical assistance they require because it is covered by Social Security and they will also receive the remuneration that corresponds to them for being on leave, some social and labor obligations covered by the norm that regulates hiring at source and that a Surexport spokeswoman guarantees that they will go away to meet.
“We are also going to cover what they would have earned if they had finished the campaign,” she says.
The company has also covered all the costs of repatriating Sarah's body.
The agricultural cooperative is one of the largest in the province of Huelva, where it cultivates more than 500 hectares of red berries and employs 4,300 people, including 892 Moroccans.
Surexport is going to pay for the travel of the relatives of the deceased seasonal worker who want to travel to Huelva and that of the three day laborers who are most seriously ill.
To this end, it is working with the Government and the Moroccan consulate to speed up visa procedures.
Processing the arrival of relatives
Apparently, it is another Tuesday at the Surexport headquarters in the Matalagraña industrial estate, next to El Rocío.
But among the bustle of the trucks that enter the warehouses to leave loaded with strawberries, the cars of representatives of the Government sub-delegation in Huelva, the Labor Inspectorate and the Moroccan consulate mix, which are coordinating to speed up the entire process. of repatriation and the arrival of relatives.
Before saying goodbye, one of the members of the Moroccan delegation is interested in the funeral home with which the cooperative works in order to contact her.
Sarah was around 40 years old and leaves three children in her country.
It was her fourth strawberry campaign in Huelva and her first with Surexport.
On many occasions, it is the workers who, in the previous selection processes in their country, ask to change companies because they know that the working conditions are better or because they have made friends in other seasons with other women and hope to be able to live together during the months that they are away from his family.
"It is very hard to come to work outside and find death."
This and other similar phrases are those that the residents of Almonte and San Juan del Puerto pronounce when they are asked about the bus accident.
This is the first incident of this severity faced by both Surexport and the company with which the transport was subcontracted.
The Civil Guard continues to investigate the reasons why the driver - who was one of the slightly injured who was discharged on Monday - could lose control of the vehicle.
The very thick fog that covered the road that connects San Juan del Puerto with the roundabout at the Almonte exit, where the bus crashed before dawn, is the main hypothesis being considered.
Sarah, like her 40 colleagues who did survive the accident, had just joined the campaign less than a month ago.
Since April 12, she had made the 40-kilometre journey that separated the house where they shared confidences and exhaustion twice a day.
On Monday, she Sarah couldn't finish that route.
It was her last trip.
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