I think people who survive a fire go a little crazy. I have known three cases and, without investigating, I notice that the survivors are changed. They say “you can’t imagine it,” and then they make radical changes in their lives. I don’t know if these are three isolated cases, or if it is something common. A friend has prepared an evacuation plan for his most valuable possessions in case of a fire. I also have my own protocol in case it happens. You will not remember a character from a very distant talent in 2004 when a fire caught him unawares at home. Flames surrounded him and his dog on a balcony in the center of Madrid. The man, in his underwear and in a panic, jumped out of the window with the dog in his arms, ignoring the instructions of the firefighters. The images—recorded by a passerby—cut before the terrified stylist jumped into the void. In the comments, only insults for dragging the dog with him, as if fire were a situation in which one can maintain common sense.
In Spain we are sadly accustomed to forest fires, those that precede suspicious economic interests. We do not associate it so much with , where, however, warehouses of films that we will never see have burned. I won’t be the only one who has thought about , London after midnight in its original version (I take this opportunity to recommend Alberto Ávila Salazar), a film that no one can remember anymore, because no copy has survived its viewers. Celluloid, when it was celluloid, burned like tinder. To the human, ecological and material misfortune of a fire, in this case we add the paradox of being an environment that is as familiar to us as the movies we have grown up with. as if they were mortal, as if things were not resolved through speeches on stage. Fire must drive anyone crazy. Some think about saving their lives, others think about saving the furniture. And, seeing that money is not enough to put out a fire, we have to think about whether these misfortunes, which are becoming more and more frequent, are not telling us that we have to make sure, first of all, that we always have water for everyone. Water, shelter, food, heat. And then we can worry about the rest.
