I could close my eyes and list from memory the shop signs that lined the Camí Reial, the artery that connects the towns in the south of Valencia as a single large town. Densely inhabited, almost without visible borders between each population, united and strong like the leaves of the artichokes that resist in the residual orchards. The trip to the big city, on the old Auvaca buses, had something of a Homeric route, from our peripheral satellite position, with its New Jersey atmosphere. The rhythm of the slow and trembling bus, with sudden braking at stops every hundred meters, always packed with people, was the melody of a love song. With lyrics composed of vestiges of old cinemas; of nightclubs from the 90s that are now extinct; of recreational establishments that are now telephone businesses and in which small-time local criminals marked their boastful law; of invincible horchaterías; of bowling alleys that served incredible paellas; of the traditional wedding and communion halls that made the region famous; of the aristocratic cafes of Massanassa where our parents already met; of obsolete urban gas stations; of the advertising written in paint of that proud Cuna del Moble of Benetússer, Alfafar and Sedaví, which surrendered in the face of the great Viking landing; of the rice mills of La Torre that Estellés already mentioned to describe a post-war period that has suddenly become raw, brown, wrapped in mermaids and familiar.
That entire sentimental map has been devastated in a disaster that I am incapable of processing, even of verbalizing, while I kindly defer to journalist friends who invite me to reflect on the air about what has happened, which is very similar to having to talk about the end. of the world. My world. Here we go, collapse of Zweig’s Europe. I don’t know what to say, nor do I have time, removing mud with shovels from the house that my father built stone by stone. Més avant escriuràs el teu cant. My family is from Albal and Sedaví. I went to school in Picanya and to the overcrowded Catarroja high school in the 90s, forever making friends from each town. The shock wave of the ravine has reached my entire memory and for now I can only list the damage, reconstruct an image that seems almost posthumous, save the photos that appear in the mud, with their particular development process, with their macabre point, separating with the gloves the mud to recognize the place, the year. Bilbao 1985. Paris 1996. Galicia 2002.
In one of the last conversations I had with my father, who died just a year ago, I swore to him that I would take care of his memory. Of all the legacy of values and memories with which he guided us and we grew. The chest of a precious treasure, which ranged from respect for a job well done, for the word given, for quiet routines, for the beautiful vocabulary of life among orange trees, to our conversations, which I recorded. In one of them, he told me how the flood of ’57 reached Albal. The overflowing of the Poyo, the fury unleashed by the Rambleta, one of the arms of the ravine, until it burst into our streets, the old tile in Galiana’s workshop, that is still there, marking the height that the water reached. A script that has been followed on this occasion, even with more virulence. And that is proof that, as then, the mission to protect a memory that we believe is threatened will be transformed into a new story. Everything will start again, even if it is different. A story that will talk about a reconstruction with Aragonese, Andalusian or Basque firefighters and brigade members, tens of thousands of neighbors and volunteers coming from all over, crossing every day with shovels, buckets and brooms a walkway barely two years old, but with eternal symbolism. They represent the security of joy, of solidarity on which the collective landscape of a new Camí Reial that they have begun to draw and that belongs to them will take root. The melody of a song that, one day, they will whistle with their eyes closed.
