Thousands of people cross a bridge over V-30, a highway in the region of Valencia, Spain. In their hands they carry shovels, buckets, bottles of water. On their backs, in backpacks, they carry food and cleaning products. Some walk for more than an hour and don’t know who they are going to help, it doesn’t matter.

“I take medicine and fruit, which is what people ask me for. Yesterday I brought cans of preserves. Oh, and this is perfect for removing mud,” he says, holding up a window cleaner. Cristina Mansilla, 22, walks with nine friends towards ground zero of the storm that probably caused the most serious floods of this century on the entire European continent.

This group of friends has been following the same route for three days. They park the car and move at a good pace for approximately an hour along roads and paths closed to traffic. “We are going to Paiporta. Yesterday we had seven people to empty a lady’s house, but there are thousands. A lot of help is needed. Today we are going to see if the same lady still needs help, if not, let’s go somewhere else.”

“It is a very delicate topic, but… I have not seen people. The streets are full of cars. You arrive and you don’t know where to start. There are so many cars, so many things. “It is difficult, especially for older and more vulnerable people.”

The friend, with a shovel on his shoulder, continues: “When you talk to someone, the first thing they do is cry. You know they need help.” Álvaro Felguera, 21 years old, has no doubts: “There are too few of us for what is needed. Let the army be called seriously. 500 is nothing.”

It is mainly young people walking to the cities most affected by the storm, which has already killed at least 211 people, according to the most recent data. They are organized on social networks, in WhatsApp, Telegram or Facebook groups.

The massive response moves Rosa Colombo, 67, who pushes her shopping cart at a slower pace. The husband goes a few meters ahead. “We have some friends in Picanya and we brought them some things, soup, bread. Let’s help as much as we can to clean up the mud.” He smiles when he realizes that he is talking to Portuguese journalists. He explains that his niece works in Lisbon monitoring content on TikTok.

They are the same age as those who are surpassing them, almost all in a group. “I see so much youth that it impresses me a lot. “It makes me really want to cry seeing all this,” he comments with teary eyes. “The youth we have is wonderful. A wonder. I know I can’t make much, but with a little bit of everything… you can make rice. But put in the newspaper what young people are doing. Long live this youth!”

The laughter mixes with the noise of the wheels on the tar: there are wheelbarrows, shopping carts and suitcases full of preserves, food, bread, water. Men, above all, carry bottles and jerrycans of water. Some have been doing this for several days, you can see the mud on their shovels and brooms.

“I have blisters on my feet, but we keep going,” says a young woman enthusiastically. “Did you see the numbers of missing people?” asks another. The Government does not confirm the figures published by the Spanish press, citing a document from the meeting with the crisis cabinet this Friday.

María stands out for being one of the few who walks alone. The 29-year-old nurse travels with her family to a nearby town. “They haven’t called us to the hospital yet,” he points out. With your hands free, it becomes light. “At least in this area they have food. What they need is help.”

A group of children stop to stretch a black ribbon and wrap it around their ankles. No water will get between the plastic bags they carry on their feet and the pants they wear, they say. “This looks like the Camino de Santiago,” says one.

Like the pilgrims to Compostela, they also finally reach their destination. Picanya is, this Saturday, a city occupied by volunteers. “We don’t care if it is known or not. “We came to help.” Elena, 49 years old, came with nine people on foot from Valencia. Wear a respiratory mask. “The water has been stagnant since Tuesday. We should all wear masks. There may be bacteria, viruses, infections. It is best to be prepared to avoid further problems.” This Saturday, 19 volunteers suffered carbon monoxide poisoning while cleaning a garage in Chiva.

“It will take a little time [as autoridades] Think carefully about the management you did,” he says. “I know people who are at ground zero, in Paiporta, and no one has come to help other than volunteers. I think what they want is to avoid danger. But in the end, who is on the street? If they are not volunteers, who are they?

At the doors of a house in Picanya there are several backpacks hanging. There are 12 people who, in a coordinated dance, throw bowls of clay from the garage into the street. They don’t know each other, but they got together through a WhatsApp group. “If we didn’t come, would he come? [Carlos Mazón, Presidente da Generalidade Valenciana] There’s no one here. Excavators are needed to remove all this water, heavy machinery is missing. We can help in a house, in a garage, but on the street. Nothing can be done without someone coming to remove all the debris. We need many more people, many more volunteers, much more of everything. “It’s a disaster.”

The words of revolt are from Lucía Piqueras. She has short hair and a silver medal around her neck that says “mami” (“mom”). The two small children are what worries another mother next door. “The little one doesn’t seem like it, but he also suffers. It was Covid and then this,” he tells the Observer, amid the rubble of the first floor of the house where the mud reached the ceiling. “The most important thing is life. I don’t even want to imagine what it’s like to lose someone. But what now? “Now we have to clean up.”

The Generalitat asks volunteers to “come back tomorrow”

The massive show of solidarity in Valencia brought a ray of hope amid the devastation caused by what is expected to be the deadliest climate disaster to hit the country in recent history. But given the number of people who offered their help to collaborate in cleaning and logistics tasks in the affected areas, the Government of the province of Valencia thanked them, but said that the presence of volunteers could “hinder the work of the emergency services.” “.

Not even 24 hours later, the Generalitat reversed course and created a volunteer coordination center, in collaboration with the Volunteer Platform of the Valencian Community. To organize the work groups “in an efficient and planned manner”, the volunteers will concentrate in the Ciutat de les Arts y Ciências to be properly distributed in buses to the towns where the cleaning tasks are carried out, the government indicated. By Carlos Mazón.

The population’s response was clear: on Saturday morning, 10,000 people responded to the call, in endless queues. Lorena arrived with her father, her boyfriend and a friend, around 8:30 in the morning, but the crowd of people was such that they only managed to get on a bus at 12:30. They left for the Bonaire Shopping Center, the meeting point to begin dividing the volunteers into zones. When they got there, around 1 p.m., they couldn’t believe what they were told. “We waited inside the bus, they ended up telling us that they didn’t need us anywhere and they brought us back to Valencia,” the 23-year-old girl tells Observador. “We took food and brought it,” she remembers, still amazed.

“There was a lot of indignation about the situation on the bus, a lot of shouting, a lot of questions about what was going to be done with this food,” continues the companion who was accompanying her. “And in the end nobody knows anything, absolutely nothing. In our case they did not give us any information about the type of work we were going to do. “It’s chaotic,” he laments. “There were people who got off the bus and continued walking on their own.”

With clean flip flops and washed clothes, the frustrated young people tell what they see in the WhatsApp groups: “Apparently there was a lot of poor communication and management of the groups from the beginning. “That’s what made a lot of people angry.”

Faced with the organization’s response (“come back tomorrow”), the friends admit: “Let’s hope tomorrow is better. It is assumed that fewer people will come and that it will be easier to manage,” says Lorena. But they won’t go back there. “We thought we were going to go further thanks to the bus. But tomorrow we will try to go alone.”

Several hours later, the volunteer center has been practically dismantled and few people are seen. A group of people wearing food bank vests unload a van. When asked by the Observer, they say they don’t know where their food comes from or where it goes. Responsible? “There is no one here,” they respond.

“I don’t agree,” Lorena repeats. “I haven’t been to the towns because I couldn’t get there, but I really want to go. “We have friends who are affected and we want to help them, but I feel like they won’t let me.”