The train operated by Iro that had to arrive in Seville at 13.30. His 220 passengers – many of them tourists – have done it at 10 am on Tuesday. Almost a day later. Almost 100 kilometers from the Andalusian capital, in the middle of nowhere. The exhaustion in their gestures when crossing the sliding door of arrivals of the Santa Justa station barely illustrated the hours of uncertainty while they were stranded in full sun until the Civil Guard arrived, nor the waste of solidarity of the residents of the tables of Guadalora, the district of the municipality of Cordoba of Hornachuelos, where they have also spent a busy night and without any; five in the morning.
“It has been somewhat Dantesco,” summarizes the 49 -year -old Sandra Fontelo experience who had been visiting a relative over the weekend. When the train stopped, following the instructions of those responsible for the company, all passengers got off. “We saw that in the distance there was an Adif ship and we went to her parallel to the train tracks,” explains Sandra. There they remained seven hours with hardly any water. “The worst was the cold that came later and uncertainty, because we had no connection,” says Mauricio Jiménez, the patriarch of a Costa Rican family of seven members who is at the end of his journey through Europe. “Without a doubt this has been our best adventure,” he emphasizes with irony.
Several civil guard vehicles appeared at the edge of the seven in the afternoon that were supplied with water and snacks, but from no solution to their painful situation. “They told us that we were going to have to stay there,” says Alejandra Rosaroli, 46 -year -old Argentina with the backpack in tow loaded with the memories of the Camino de Santiago that had just finished already those who wanted to add a tour of southern Spain. In his tired eyes a vault of the unease that he felt when the agents did not offer them any alternative, he passes out of the abandonment in which they were mired.
However, almost two hours later, around 20.30, they were confirmed that they could move to Guadalora tables, just a kilometer. The civil guards in their vehicles and an Adif worker, who had moved there with his, moved them to the town hall of the district. They were not expected that after the cold of the ship they were going to find the heat of their 400 neighbors. “They brought chairs and mattresses from their homes, opened the rural house for families with young children. How they behaved,” Sandra recalls, at the only time in which the fatigue of their face evaporates.
“From the blackout, in the town square it was commented that a train had been stopped, then it was said that the situation had been resolved, but at the last minute it was already confirmed that they came here. There was a lot of confusion,” explains José Luis fulfilled from the phone, which runs the kiosk-bar the chiringuito, at Guadalora tables. “We organized the town hall in seconds. Everyone brought from their houses chairs, tables, hammocks, blankets … and then the catering we have in the town turned to them and began to make food,” says the mayor, Eugenia Moreno, deeply excited by the generosity of her neighbors.
And they, who had mired in the dark from the blackout, did not hesitate to cook for them soup and macaroni or take pasta and coffee. “Those who had rural houses offered them, those who had a bed too, and we were pointing where each one stayed,” says Moreno. They even brought generators to try to offer them the light they did not have. “Why did we want her if all the town was in the square with them?” Says the mayor.
Disconnected, without electricity, but with good food, travelers could cope with part of the night. But without much calm. Because at about four in the morning, the agents told them that they had to return to the train because they were going to move it to Madrid. “There we had left the bags,” Mauricio recalls.
So, again, they all got on the cars of the Civil Guard and that of the neighbors who lent volunteers to return to the field of Cordoba. But, once there, they were called back, because there had been a change of plans. Upon returning, they at least had the good news that the light had returned to the town, but chaos and uncertainty also made an appearance again.
“They told us that those who wanted to go back to Madrid had to return to the train because I was going to go there and that those who did not have to look for our lives,” says Sandra, although almost instantly the first option was discarded again. With all the accumulated tiredness and without dissipating uncertainty, many of the travelers fell into a total discouragement. “It was a feeling of terrible abandonment. But is it that nobody was going to take care of us?” Rosalía says. From that abatement and despair, some neighbors of the district were also used that offered to take passengers to Seville for 50 euros. “At least they were not the 200 that the town taxi driver asked,” says Sandra.
Pride and uncertainty in the Málaga-Madrid journey
Finally, shortly before nine in the morning, they were confirmed that everyone could return to Seville. “The neighbors made a caravan again to take them to the train,” recalls the mayor. Before his convoy, we had to wait for another 300 passengers, also stranded in the province of Córdoba, resumed their journey from Malaga to Madrid. One of them was Carmen Marín, who got on a train operated by Ouigo on Monday at 11.15 and 24 hours later he was still in him. They were stranded 20 kilometers from the municipality of Brazatattas, in the province of Ciudad Real. “The crew decided to stop in the substation of Adif in sale Inés because it was a wide, flat and shadow place. No one knew the time we were going to be there and a minimum of comfort was good to get a little out of the wagons,” Carmen explains even from her seat, a little tired “and something bored and after so many hours.”
She and her travel companions were totally incommunicado until in the middle of the afternoon some boys found a neighbor of the town in the surroundings. He warned other residents and later several vehicles arrived in the area to bring food. With them, they were able to transfer the old people and the children with their families who wanted it to the Manchega town. “The worst thing is that there was no information and yes much uncertainty,” he says. Most of the ticket decided – 250 people – stay on the train. They satisfied the hunger with the foods that took them from the municipality and when the night fell they managed as they could to sleep.
Shortly after midnight the light returned, so minutes later, they moved to the south to Villanueva de Córdoba, where they have spent all morning. “First of the hour, about six, Red Cross came and gave us a ration of food per person,” says the woman. At that time the coverage returned and that was when they knew that their train was one of the three that had not yet been evacuated. “Shortly after Villanueva’s neighbors came to bring us more breakfasts, as well as local police, civil protection and civil guard. We have not seen the UME,” Carmen highlights that, finally, he has seen how the train began to move towards Madrid around 11.00 in the morning. “But it is very slow because there must be a lot of traffic on the tracks, we hope for eating time,” he says. “The feeling is proud because I have not become nervous and I have tried to help all the time. But in general all the train people have been very good and also the residents of the peoples, who have helped us a lot,” he concludes.
