The people on La Palma have been living with the lava eruptions for four weeks – there is no end in sight. But some are already making plans for the future.
For some people on La Palma, the bad news is getting too much. “The island of La Palma is a safe area,” write eight island associations in a call distributed on Friday. “We all lead a normal life, albeit deeply sad and worried about those affected by the volcano, which doesn’t even have a name.” Companies, restaurants, hotels and transport companies continued to operate as before. “More than ever, we need visitors to come and help us survive this natural disaster that affects eight percent of our territory.”
But nobody comes. The island hotels are occupied by 15 percent. And that right now, when La Palma was hoping, like the other Canary Islands, to finally get out of the pandemic valley. But the tourists are cautious. Perhaps more out of piety than fear for your own well-being: It doesn’t seem right to take a carefree vacation where so many people live in deep worry every day.
“This morning I almost got a heart attack when the postman rings the doorbell,” Senaida, an island resident, told an El País reporter on Thursday. “I thought it was the Guardia Civil that would get us out of the house.” Senaida lives with her husband on the edge of the restricted area around the lava flow that pours down from the volcano into the sea about six kilometers away. But a lava flow is not a river that has found its bed, but a moving being that is always looking for new paths. This week, 800 people in the La Laguna settlement had to leave their homes as a precaution because a new tongue of lava was approaching. This fate is shared by around 7,000 palm Eros. Senaida is afraid of being one of the next.
“The area affected adds up to 674 hectares,” reported the island administration on Thursday evening. 34 hectares more than the day before. The lava has buried almost one percent of the island’s area in the past four weeks. And the volcano doesn’t stop bubbling. “We had expected somewhat more modest lava output and duration,” said the Spanish chief geologist Juana Vegas in a radio interview on Friday morning. But what worries them most is that the lava flows into the middle of inhabited and agricultural areas. “That distinguishes this outbreak from others in the past” – at least on La Palma.
Even after almost four weeks, the volcano still has surprises in store. On Thursday evenings it is more hot and liquid than ever. The volcanological institute of the Canaries puts pictures of it on the net and speaks of a lava “tsunami” of “impressive speed”. At the same time the earth continues to shake. Only on Thursday morning, then on Friday morning, each with a strength of 4.5, as violent as never in the past few weeks. And violent enough that not only the seismographs feel the tremors, but also the people.
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has already visited the island four times in these four weeks. On Thursday evening he said in a television interview: “We will be there until we have rebuilt 100 percent of what the volcano destroyed.” He is not the only one who makes plans for the future. While some, like Senaida, look forward to every day “uneasily and full of fear”, others prefer to start rebuilding today rather than tomorrow. One of them, the architect José Henry from the lava-engulfed village of Todoque, encourages his old neighbors with this message: Everything should be restored, house by house, none more, none less, “with the church, the pharmacy, the little shop, the square ”. It’s good for people to hear something like that.
Even the banana farmers won’t let themselves get down. The volcano has taken around 60 hectares of its plantations so far. That doesn’t scare 52-year-old Valentín Gonzalo. “We’ll hack that up again,” he told an El Mundo reporter. “Or we’ll blow it up. And then it is planted again, and whether! You’ll see how people are planting again here! ”The farmers’ only concern is that someone might think of declaring the lava area a nature park. “They can’t take our land away from us,” says Antonio Pages, also a banana farmer. “The volcano is destroying, that’s true, but it also gives us a chance. This land will be very fertile in a few years. ”If you just let the farmers do it.
