The youth of Villaluenga de la Sagra rescue their town from the mud

Susana Rodríguez celebrates her 24th birthday while digging her shovel into the mud that accumulates on the road next to her house. Like her, other young people from this town of 4,000 inhabitants, located 25 kilometers north of Toledo, are organized into groups through a WhatsApp group to help with the cleaning work necessary as a result of the damage caused by the past 3 September left in the homes and streets of the municipality. In the Toledo region to which Villaluenga belongs, 267 liters per square meter were accumulated, according to data collected by the State Meteorological Agency (AEMET).

The home of Lorena Sánchez’s mother, 41, is one of the homes that receives the most neighborhood assistance. The water that was dammed in a side plot after the torrential rains leaks through one of the walls of this home. A neighbor has been working for five hours with a drainage pump to try to alleviate this problem that causes this family’s garage to continue flooding. Sánchez defines the day of the dana as “terror”. She remained clinging to the fence of this same house while the stream, which is next door, overflowed. “It took a minute until I could reach the terrace, but it was endless,” she adds.

Raised cobblestones, uprooted trees or overturned garbage containers are the sights that can be found until you reach the center of town. Natalia, Diego and Marcos wander there, all three of them 19 years old. They have sweat and mud on their faces. Since Monday the shovel is already an extension in his hands. “We help as much as we can, we clean and clean mud all day,” explains Diego, exhausted.

A few meters from them is the De Cine bar. Its owner, Fermín Domingo, 33, now has the floor of the premises raised, the windows broken and the cold rooms useless. “I total losses of more than 10,000 euros,” he laments. Four days have passed since the torrential rains, but Domingo feels that the sky is still breaking above his head. “The water entered the bar from the outside but also from the inside because it came out non-stop from the toilets and other drains,” he says. Given the danger of it reaching his neck, he wanted to move to the store opposite. “We were perched on the window bars next to a client.” It took us an hour to cross 15 meters,” recalls José Luis García, the bar waiter.

From left to right, waiter José Luis García and Fermín Domingo, owner of the ‘De cine’ bar, pose in the center of town. Bald Olmo

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The inhabitants have started a mobilization in networks, supported by the Consistory, so that their town is declared as a catastrophic area as soon as possible. “The request from the Junta de Castilla-La Mancha has been made and we hope that it will be approved next Tuesday in the Council of Ministers”, alleges Fernando Prieto, head of communication for the City Council, who comments that there are about 11 operators working but “that they are not “They are enough, so the help of neighbors is necessary.” Prieto estimates that these damages will cost the municipality an extra expense of more than two million euros. Through a phone call for being outside the municipality, the mayor of Villaluenga de la Sagra, Carlos Casarrubios, says that “the magnitude of what happened is enormous.”

A group of nine young people between 18 and 20 years old are gathered at the doors of the Villaluenga multipurpose center. They all wear knee-high rubber boots, once green and now brown, and their clothes dirty from fighting in the mud. They are lying on the sidewalk and enjoying a plate of macaroni and tomato sauce that a group of volunteers has given them. At this point a food service has been installed that a local company has donated. They also distribute bottled water. The town has not had drinking water since the day the damage occurred and until this Thursday there was no supply either. Currently there is, but the slight flow that comes out of the tap can only be used for cleaning and personal hygiene tasks.

Some volunteers distribute food and water to residents at the town’s multipurpose center. Bald Olmo

Next to this building on Lepanto street and with a small crane, a man who has preferred not to reveal his identity, transports to the sports center the vehicles that were parked on the road and that are now destroyed and unusable because they were swept away by the enormous flood that was formed. “I have already moved 16 but there are many more cars to remove from the streets,” he explains.

It is nine at night and the light begins to fall on this area of ​​La Mancha. In some areas the streetlights still do not turn on, for this reason, when night comes the neighbors stop working. “It’s dangerous!” A woman shouts from afar with a bucket overflowing with mud in her arms. In the morning, the young people of Villaluenga will get going again because they assure: “There are still weeks of great sacrifice.”

A group of young people between 18 and 20 years old rest in front of the town’s multipurpose center after helping to clean the mud streets. Bald Olmo

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