“What is happening with the volcano is impossible to describe in words”

“What is happening to us is impossible to describe in words,” he said. Bugle Argentina’s Juliana Bertucci Busso from the island of La Palma, rocked by the eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano since Sunday and where she has lived for 18 years.

Married to a palm tree, Luis Pérez Hernández, with whom in 2017 she set up the Los Argentinos grill, Juliana lives in Los Llanos de Aridane, one of the municipalities evacuated by the eruption of the volcano that has already devoured 350 houses on the Isle .

Yours, for now, is safe. “My house is 8 kilometers from the first mouth of the volcano which opened. We live in the urban area, which is higher and where the lava has not reached, ”says Juliana.

“I see the volcano from my roof, I hear it roar, I feel it, the ashes make it difficult for me to breathe, but it did not destroy the house as it happens to other neighbors, ”she consoles herself.

Her children, Tomas, 16, and Lucas, 10, are not attending school. “At school, they were prepared for the eruption. They are not afraid but they are locked in their homes, ”he said.

An Argentinian grill near the lava

The Los Argentinos grill-restaurant that Juliana and Luis opened four years ago, and where emptiness and sweetbreads are, they say, a dream, has not closed despite the lava pouring out has already burned 160 hectares of the island.

It is located in the historic center, near the town hall where Juliana, graduated in journalism from the University of La Plata in 2002, coordinates the press office of the mayor, María Noelia García Leal.

“The grill is always open but people who haven’t lost their home hardly leave the house,” Luis explains to Bugle. “The normal thing is that there are 30 tables and there are only reservations for two,” he adds.

Slow forward

Because at these times, in La Palma perplexity and uncertainty reign. This is what causes, among experts and neighbors, the behavior of the volcano on its fifth day of eruption without interruption.

The roar is permanent, the exit of the magma from its entrails is still explosive but the lava moves more slowly than the previous days: it advances at four meters per hour and the volcanologists who follow in its tracks begin to doubt that it reaches the Atlantic.

This allowed that this Thursday, the inhabitants of Todoque, the last district that the lava will find on its way to the sea, can return home to rescue something else before the rivers of incandescent rock destroy everything. Like the day before, they had 15 minutes to decide what to take and what to leave behind.

“We organized a meeting with the neighbors to make them prioritize the documents and the drugs they are taking,” says Juliana.

The local government announced Thursday the purchase of 73 homes to rehouse people who have had to leave their homes and who already number more than 6,000.

The firefighters continue to try to divert the devouring tongue towards a ravine to prevent it from destroying the church of Todoque. “It was brought up by the neighbors with their own hands,” says the parish priest.

Kings visit

The wind has changed and this is pouring volcanic ash on La Palma airport, threatening its normal functioning.

The Kings of Spain, Felipe VI and Letizia, disembarked there on Thursday, visiting evacuated neighbors and listening to the devastating stories of men and women who, even with videos on their cellphones, showed the kings how they had lost everything .

According to the Canary Islands Volcanological Institute, the rash can last between 24 and 84 days.

“There is a saying here among the elderly that each generation of palm trees has to experience its own volcano,” says Juliana. October marks 50 years since the last eruption of the previous volcano. This is the one that touches us. “

Madrid, correspondent

CB