Angelita García (Granada, 94 years old) has a fridge full of food and a house dotted with dolls and memories of her grandchildren. It’s a typical grandmother’s house, with years of family history hanging on all the walls. She built it herself, with her husband, brick by brick and over many nights, when Torre Baró grew with the hands of Andalusian migrants who had arrived on the slopes of Barcelona looking for a place to live. There she raised her children, grew old, and became one of the neighbors who still preserve the memory of the neighborhood portrayed in the award-winning film El 47. She never plans to leave that house. “If they offer me an apartment in the center of Barcelona, I’ll never leave.”
On Tuesday, however, Angelita had to suddenly abandon it for more than five hours. A fire declared at 3:20 PM in the Collserola natural park advanced up the mountain until it approached Torre Baró. The fire was then already burning about 35 hectares and forced the preventive evacuation of 35 residents from buildings on Castellví and Lliçà streets, while the rest of Torre Baró and Ciutat Meridiana remained confined. Angelita was among those who had to leave. “My daughter arrived at my house in the afternoon and we went to my granddaughter’s house,” she recalls.
Around 200 firefighters participated in the extinguishing efforts, which mobilized personnel from the Barcelona City Council and the Generalitat, as well as aerial resources. The flames advanced up the Collserola hillside until they approached the homes in Torre Baró and Ciudad Meridiana. Emergency teams worked primarily to prevent the fire from reaching inhabited areas. As of this afternoon, the fire has burned 54 hectares, and the firefighters’ work has managed to stabilize it, awaiting it to be considered controlled.
Angelita belongs to the generation of families from Andalusia who arrived in Barcelona and built a large part of the neighborhood. “It was a huge scare. I built this house with my own hands alongside my husband. If it burns down or I have to leave, I’ll die,” says Angelita. In her case, the family extends beyond surnames to a large part of the neighbors. “Life here is very good, it’s not like people say out there. We are all family.”
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That neighborhood network was reactivated on Tuesday as smoke spread through Collserola and emergency vehicles traversed the neighborhood’s slopes. Civil Protection sent two Es-Alert messages in the afternoon with the confinement order and instructions to close doors and windows. By 6:30 PM, emergency services had already received over a thousand calls to 112. However, several residents of the two evacuated streets in Torre Baró claim that these messages never reached their phones. Izan, a neighbor and Angelita’s grandson, says: “Neither my family nor anyone I know received it. Two streets down, yes,” he complains. A large part of them learned of the instructions through the loudspeakers of police and fire department vehicles patrolling the area.
Janira Munhóz, 20, was alone at home when the fire started and was the first neighbor to be evacuated. “I went out and started collecting everything that could burn from the terrace. The firefighters had already jumped onto my roof,” she recalls. “All the commotion in the street was very quick. In a very short time, I was already evacuated and hadn’t been warned of anything.” Meanwhile, the roads from Horta to Collserola, del Cementerio, and Roquetes were cut off, and Rodalies R4 line trains stopped stopping at the station.
For those who have lived there for decades, the fire left, above all, a huge scare. Residents of Castellví and Lliçà saw the flames approach houses where the mountain practically begins on the other side of the door. “I’ve never been evacuated before because of a fire,” says Izan. The proximity of the forest, however, does not make them consider leaving. “There are always fires, we know it’s going to happen every summer. It’s rare when it doesn’t,” he says without thinking twice. This Wednesday, in the two evacuated streets, normality had returned, and residents were back to their routines. The fire had moved away, but an old and familiar feeling of still being on one of Barcelona’s outskirts remained.
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