From disbelief to anger, Alicia has lived every emotion since Thursday afternoon when, returning from the grocery store, she found her Valencia apartment in flames. Today marks the second morning she has woken up in a hotel room, ready to spend the day coordinating with neighbors to share information and pool resources. “This is the first thing I do every morning,” Alicia says, pulling a notes page stamped with the Hotel Valencia Palace logo.
A sharpened list details what she needs now: nail clippers, toiletry bags, small bottles, tank tops, a scalp towel, and a razor. These items appear on her second list, written on the second day of life without a home. She admits she woke up angry on Saturday. “The first thing I did was look for my watch and realized I no longer have a watch or a home.”
It is a tale of a gradually unfolding catastrophe. The first list included essentials like underwear, socks, a toothbrush, among other things, and this is a continuation of a set of needs that begin with bare basics. They have nothing left. Yet they are alive, and that is something Alicia emphasizes with relief.
“Going to the supermarket saved my life”
She recalls the images that burned into her memory. She lived with her partner Marcos on the seventh floor of the tall Maestro Rodrigo building, apartment number 70. The fire started on the eighth floor. Alicia had gone to the supermarket, while Marcos was at work. When she returned, she witnessed the horror. “I drew closer and saw a black cloud of smoke. I was on the phone with a friend, but at a moment I could no longer hear what they were saying,” she recalls with tears. She works from home and thanks the decision to be out at that precise moment, a choice that felt small at the time but proved life saving in the event.
Two days later, she is beginning to grasp what happened, though she still struggles to accept it. “We cannot fully process it. You leave and cannot return, yet I need to step up onto the floor to feel the ground and see that this is real. It is the first step of the grieving process,” Alicia adds, noting that she and Marcos moved to the burned-out apartment just under a year ago.
“It feels like we are watching a movie”
Marcos, her partner, was working when the crisis struck. He says it still feels like a movie when they stepped outside to the street and watched the flames devour the building. From the road they saw how the fire consumed the dining area, the living room, the table, and the furniture they had bought only recently. They are beginning to understand that everything they owned has been lost and they are faced with starting again from scratch.
“We have nothing left, but we cannot shed this emotional weight”
“We have nothing left, but we cannot discard the emotional burden we carry,” they explain. They use humor to cope and joke about the metal framework seen in the distant, charred skeleton of the building. Now comes the hardest part, and both know it. “May I take a photo of you?” Alicia asks. The reply is yes. “Smile, gorgeous,” she adds, then clarifies that stripped of her home and belongings, what remains and they refuse to lose is their dignity.