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Like every Monday, Miguel Ángel Ortiz stayed at the Paiporta sports center with his club – Von Hippel-Lindau – on October 28 to do running technique and strength exercises. Although we are in autumn, for the Valencian runners the spring of racing had just started: the Valencia half marathon had just been held, their club was celebrating on November 17 the V Solidarity Race of the Von Hippel-Lindau Athletics Club and some of their colleagues were facing the last training sessions for the Valencia Marathon. None of them could imagine that this would be their last run for a long time. The next day, the dana arrived.
That sports center, a symbol of meeting and joy for many athletes in Paiporta, where the members of Ortiz’s club met daily to go running or where his son played soccer, was destroyed, like a good part of the town. Before the dana, this building could not be seen from his house, but now, with a wall also fallen due to the floods, he sees its ruins daily. “It’s destroyed,” says this 47-year-old telecommunications engineer by phone. “The water in that area rose so much that the cars could no longer be seen.” I called Ortiz after he was the one who contacted me. He wrote me a letter last November 17 that I have read a dozen times and it still moves me like the first one. Since I don’t think I can tell it better than him, I reproduce it, in full, below:
“Today should have been a celebration of athletics in our town and region, since today we organized the V Solidarity Race of the Von Hippel-Lindau Athletics Club, the club to which I belong. The club was formed more than 10 years ago to support and give visibility to patients with Von Hippel-lindau, a disease classified as rare. We were very excited because this year the route was changed and we offered the possibility of three modalities: 5 km, 10 km and solidarity walk. But the 29th arrived and everything blew up…
On the 27th, a large majority of the club competed in the Valencia Half Marathon (a party runner par excellence for the route, animation, possible world and personal records…). Valencia is the City of Running, races are experienced differently, you fall in love with the city. This year, much of the race was raining, a harbinger of what would happen to us two days later. Despite the rain, we finished the race with our goal accomplished and a smile from ear to ear.
Every Monday we meet at the sports center and train running technique and strength. Our mister David Rodríguez, Spanish champion of the mile in his category weeks ago, makes us suffer with his oregons and drags, although this Monday the training was light for those of us who did the average and thus recover from the effort of the previous day.
That Monday was the last training session for many of us, who changed our sneakers for boots, and our series for shovels, removing mud from our houses and streets. It was the last time we saw the sports center standing…
Today we stopped cleaning for a while to get together and hug each other, celebrating that we are alive (each one with his own story, because we are all victims to a greater or lesser extent) and visit two points that would be important on the tour: the Plaza Mayor and the Sports Center. , where the start and finish of our race would have been established, a point where we would also meet to go out in a group the rest of the days to do lengths, series… whatever our partner Toni marked for us.
We don’t know when we will be able to change our boots for sneakers, nor when we will train again, and not even think about races. Today we had a laugh that made us forget for a moment the drama we are suffering. We hope that this nightmare ends as soon as possible, although we already know that it will be a long-distance race, but that it will be short.
“Let me not forget to thank all those anonymous people who during these almost 3 weeks are helping us to be reborn.”
Miguel Ángel Ortiz says that his street reminds him of “Groundhog Day”: “On Thursday [7 de noviembre] It was clean, but the next day it was dirty again because they took all the cars to the center of the street, picked them up and now they are taking out the junk. You see it clean, and the next day it stops being clean,” he says. Although there have been no victims in his family and the water barely entered their house, it destroyed two cars, a motorcycle and everything they had in the garage, whose door they still cannot close: “There always has to be someone at home,” says. Although he recognizes himself as “lucky” to know that he, his wife and two children are doing well.
She knows that normality will take time to return, but her greatest wish is for it to do so as soon as possible, especially for her two children, who are still out of school. Their daughter, 12, continues doing online activities, and their son, 10, has been taken to his brothers-in-law’s house, in Jarafuel, an hour and a half away by car, to provide him with a bit of that normality that they still They don’t enjoy it: there he is going to school to do activities and they have welcomed him into the Ayora soccer club, where his uncles take him to train. “We miss him a lot, but we know that it was the best thing for him at this moment,” he says.
“In Paiporta we still have no supermarkets, the majority of people still need help from volunteers to eat,” he recalls. He is one of those who distributes hot food, who brings catering, to the neighbors. Also one of those who has demonstrated for children to return to schools as soon as possible, which, according to the Ministry of Education, should happen next week. “Today, the way the schools and the streets are, school is not going to start [la semana del 25 de noviembre]”, he laments. “The necessary resources are not being provided, and being able to return, join with their classmates, play, would be a relief for all the children.”
Ortiz, a telecommunications engineer by profession, says that in his company, for which he works remotely, they have been very understanding: “They told me that they would help me with whatever I needed, and the only thing I have asked of them is time, time to help with what I needed. May I help my people get out of this,” he says. “One nice thing I told my son is that now, if the administrations take us into account, we can rebuild not the same Paiporta, but the Paiporta that we want, that we like and that we are in love with.”
