“I’m afraid to go to the airport with a girl and a dog and wait for days to see if there is a flight, especially now, under the threat of Hamas missiles,” admits long-term Asturian Joanna de Castro, with whom she lives north of Tel Aviv, where a war she never expected a year and a half to her husband and ten-year-old daughter who suffered.
“Quini”, the daughter of goalkeeper Jesús Castro (who died in 1993 after saving a drowning father and his two children off the Cantabrian coast) and the niece of the legendary Enrique Castro, who died in 2018, guarantees that the alarms are ringing. twice, once on the Saturday when the attack began and “There were three explosions”, another this Monday.
“When I took the dog out of the house, you saw rockets coming with red lights and firework sounds, and explosions when they hit the ‘iron shield’ (Israel’s anti-missile system).” “The building asked me not to go too far with the dog,” he says. And also “the constant traffic of missile-laden helicopters and the noise of fighters on the Gaza road.”
It is true that they were sincere when they settled in Israel and warned them: “Missiles are flying around here”. And a few months ago, “Hamas and Israel spent a week launching missiles.” But he admits: “We didn’t think we would see a war like this.”
Joanna de Castro observes that rather than hatred among Israelis, “there are faces of great sadness, because what is happening is brutal, they are being cruel to the civilian population, they are killing people.” children at home, to old women, to young people partying. They are more interested in finding missing people than in taking revenge. “But Israel will need to do something, it will need to defend itself, and I need it to defend itself.”
“It makes me very sad because this is a very beautiful country and I am very happy here, the people have been wonderful to us, they are friendly, happy people, they open their arms and welcome you, people very similar to us Spaniards.” “Everything is empty now,” he laments very eloquently.
“Since the conflict began”my phone is smoking“. “My mother (Blanca Covián) calls me often, I guess to check if I’m alive. His condition is bad, he cries a lot. The first alarm was captured during a video call with my daughter, she saw it live. ‘What’s happening?’ “she asked. Twice they had to go down to the fortified bunker.
Joanna didn’t even try to go to the airport to leave the country. “Everything is chaotic and the airport has collapsed, it’s not worth it, it’s also a target, missiles are falling, but I understand people are trying everything possible to get out of here,” he said.
Her mother, Blanca Covían, feels the situation with great sadness from Asturias: “I heard that they went to the shelter twice because of the alarm. It’s a terrible situation, I’m very afraid that something will happen to them.”