In Valencia, unfortunately, it takes less than ten minutes to find someone who has spent the night in suspense. Some of them breathe a sigh of relief at the entrance to L’Alqueria del Basket, one of the great basketball incubators in Europe, a Valencia Basket center with 13 courts converted into a shelter for more than a hundred of those affected by the damage. Víctor Luengo, historic captain of the club, a man with his shirt with the number 15 hanging from the ceiling of the pavilion next door, leaves L’Alqueria dressed in the team’s clothing and with a contorted face. “Very hard, this is very hard,” he murmurs while he attends to a councilor as well as to a relative who arrives and asks anxiously if one of his own is there.
Sport is also supportive when tragedy strikes nearby. “Valencia Basket made itself available to the institutions early at night, as soon as it knew that there could be homeless people. People have not stopped coming throughout the day and the workers are helping to make them as comfortable as possible. And we will be here until it is necessary,” explains Alberto Chilet, club spokesperson.
Very close by, taking the last puffs of a cigarette, a middle-aged man flashes a plaster smile to explain his drama. Sergio Margalef left work at seven thirty in the afternoon. He went to the North Station to take the train to go to Cullera and, seeing that there was no train service, he decided to get in a taxi. “After 10 minutes the alarm went off on the cell phone and the taxi driver and I realized that it was something serious. Ten minutes later, that kind of mini tsunami came from the side and the water began to rise. I got out, crossed over to the opposite road and a few of us started to climb to a bridge and stayed there all night. Three civil guards came and in the end we had to rescue him too and they ended up on the bridge with us. The good thing is that they gave us a lot of peace of mind on a long, cold night, until half past five when other civil guards rescued us.”
They fed Sergio “more than decent” rice and a Russian salad. Walk around with some slippers, long Valencia Basket pants, and a polo shirt and jacket from the Valencia Half Marathon, which was held on Sunday. The organizers of the race, both the Trinidad Alfonso Foundation and the Correcaminos Sports Society, went to L’Alqueria in the morning to collaborate and take everything they found in the warehouse: t-shirts, sneakers, sweatshirts… Different companies completed the rest: food , blankets, mattresses… And something that was very necessary: slippers and socks for victims who had been barefoot for hours.
Sergio, apparently recovered from the shock, thanked them for how they had received him. “They have treated us like 10. As soon as you arrive you see doctors and they offer you food, coffee, a change of clothes, and hygiene products. This is appreciated after having seen and heard horrible things. “It just bothers me that they force me to stay one more day.”
Valencia CF also expressed its solidarity with the victims. The club allied itself with the Valencia Food Bank and turned Mestalla into a point to go and deposit food and basic necessities.
People keep coming and going from L’Alqueria. Argimiro, a well-known jeweler in the city, appears from a taxi and says that he heard that there was a need for towels and he has filled an entire car with full bags. Sitting on some high chairs in the cafeteria, a couple of foreigners observe everything with lost eyes. The movie of a horrible night keeps playing in their heads. Roman is Polish and says that in 1995 and 1997 he already experienced floods in Poland. The damage surprised him in Alfafar, a town seven kilometers from Valencia where a level crossing was destroyed. When the water reached his knees, he took refuge on the stairs of a building.
At his side is Berangere, a French woman who on Saturday found herself in the middle of another flood in the south of her country and for this reason she had to delay her trip by car to Lluxent, near Gandia, and that is why she was trapped in the car. when I was driving on V-30. “It was a disaster because no one came to help us. Nobody. We had to risk our lives in the middle of the night with a very strong current of water. At least we have been lucky in that they have treated us phenomenally here.”
