«What if I want to recover my house from the lava?» is perhaps one of the questions that has been asked the most in the last six months since the activity of the Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma ceased. The neighbors and neighbors not only yearn for their house and their neighborhood, but they are determined to fight against the lava to start over on the land it buried. It's possible? they wonder ever since.
The Pampillo-Todoque Platform is one of the neighborhood groups that gives voice to the ideas, needs, feelings and desires of those affected by this unnamed volcano on La Palma. They request access to the area of the road to expert experts chosen by the owners to prepare an independent report on the flows that affect homes, farms and land in order to evaluate the possibilities that exist to recover the area.
As its members have explained, the objective is "to vindicate the right of the population of the area to recover the Camino de Pampillo, the main communication route that this settlement used to have, and to rebuild their houses and plantations where, in some cases, their ancestors had settled centuries ago. They want no protection to be imposed on the casting area and claim "the right to return", because they feel "a link between the past, our historical heritage, so important for us and the future of future generations", and for this they need a legislative modification that gives legal certainty to the future of their properties.
"The neighborhood is still where it has always been even though it is now under lava," they say, and for this reason "we are working for and for its reconstruction." The first step is the Camino del Pampillo, the "path to the future", because the platform and the neighbors it represents confess to being "wounded" but "we continue to believe that we want to rebuild in a totally different, respectful and adapted way" because " we are part of nature, which has given us so much and, therefore, we will defend and take care of it».
In a campaign to collect signatures on the change.org platform, the platform claims "to have the opportunity to be reborn from its ashes" and stresses the importance of an "ethical management" of the recovery process "not only from the economic perspective, but also from the emotional bond they maintain with this space in the Aridane Valley». To do this, they consider it relevant to "reflect" on the possibilities of habitability of this new volcanic landscape, and if there is an option to "return it to life, integrate into it in a respectful way for nature and for those who feel that their home is there", in a challenge that, although it will be complex, they consider "reasonable, logical and noble".
In an intervention in the municipal plenary session chaired by the mayor of Los Llanos, Noelia García Leal, they have transmitted and received the commitment to "defend the recovery of the roads and the residential use that existed before the volcanic eruption", in order to be able to return to the neighborhood through Camino de Pampillo. A priori, they have advanced in the municipal plenary session it does not seem that the Pampillo-Todoque wash will have specific protection, as it will for the belt, the cone and some point in the surroundings of the Cogote mountain.
The councilors and the mayor have shared the same position, assuring in the session that "the will is to recover what existed." The platform trusts that the recovery of the roads and the residential use that the area had before the volcanic eruption of September 19, 2021 will be defended.
