Dozens of shouts roared over the Atlantic twice, once on November 24, 2020, and again on June 17, 2021. Two inflatable boats capsized off the coasts of Órzola, a fishing village, the northernmost in Lanzarote. Two shipwrecks with only seven months between them, and in both cases, the residents responded the same way: they threw themselves into the sea in the middle of the night to grope their way to rescue those they could, waited on the shore to help the rescued, and others went out into the streets loaded with blankets and hot chocolate.
In the first shipwreck, Iván Nicolás Curbelo Machín was counting down the days to his wedding while having a coffee in a village bar, Marcial Armas Torres was sitting on a bench facing the sea, and Marcos Lemes was inside his house when they saw lights in the distance and began to hear shouts. An inflatable boat had capsized off the coast of La Condesa, and the nightmare had just begun. Upon arriving at the scene of the shipwreck, another resident, Armando Tabio, saw acquaintances running towards the sea.
On the malpaís of La Corona, on November 24, 2020, the sea was violently hitting the remains of a vessel, and the shouts warned that a tragedy was unfolding just a few meters away. "We ran over the stones," recalls Marcial, who found another neighbor trying to help among the pebbles. "All the colleagues met on the way," adds Curbelo. Then came a very strong smell of gasoline and dozens of people shouting.
Upon reaching the shipwreck, everyone's attitude was the same: to jump into the water to pull people out, guided by the voices calling for help. Armando remembers "the cries of desperation" and a young man stiffened on a puddle on the shore. "He remained in the same position he arrived in the boat," he explains during an interview. Something common after days of travel in the same position inside the vessel.
That November, the water was particularly cold, but they didn't notice it until much later. "The tension was so high," recalls Armando, that there was no time to think. "We had seen the boats, but only the vessels, never the people directly," he adds.
"You were touching water canisters and pieces of wood," Marcos Lemes evokes the anguish he felt, guessing in the darkness the lives he could save. That day will hardly be erased from their minds, because although they know that area of the island very well, they had never seen anything like it.
While some helped from the shore, the more experienced ones ventured out to sea trying to rescue more people. "I would throw myself into the water and hear people screaming, far away, but when I tried to swim to find them, I would find someone in front of me, I would grab them and pull them out," narrates Marcial Armas. In that race against time, he saved seven lives, but two sounds still echo in his mind: the screams asking for help and the silence that followed: "At that moment, we realized they had drowned." Eight people died that night and 28 were saved.
"It was heartbreaking," laments Nicolás. "I felt a little disappointment, which I shouldn't have, because we risked our lives to save as many people as possible, but from the moment those screams stopped, someone went to the bottom," he continues.
During the rescue, Marcial also managed to pull out a lifeless body, that of a young man. "When there was no more sound, we found him at the end and pulled him out," he recalls, "I had never seen a dead person before." The next day, when the voices faded in the Atlantic, the bodies of those who could not be saved floated to the surface in the north of Lanzarote.
By then, they were already serving their quarantine in the Aula de la Naturaleza de Máguez, where they spent fifteen days in isolation. Nicolás had to suspend his wedding and reschedule a new date. "If it happened again tonight, I would do the same, I think my colleagues would say the same," emphasizes Nicolás, who recalls that what drove him to jump into the sea was: "To save people, we don't look at skin color, whether they were Africans, from the Sahara. There are people in danger, let's rescue them."
"A group more united by tragedy"
In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, when the importance of maintaining distance was still being emphasized, this group of neighbors did not hesitate to jump into the water to save a life. "You realize in the end that they are people trying to save themselves, to seek a better life, and you see them there, and it's terrible," says Marcial, who admits that he himself had prejudices towards people who embark on dinghies to reach the archipelago, but after that shipwreck, he sees it differently.
"When you come out and it's all over, you realize the magnitude," says Marcial. "We cried a lot of times there," they confess.
Even after almost six years, the so-called heroes of Órzola have not yet been able to reunite with those people who returned to life that November, nor to know the story that pushed them to get on that makeshift boat.
That tragic night, where they experienced "moments of terrible anguish," became a memory that united them more strongly. In fact, Nicolás recalls that when he saw a canoe capsize in El Hierro a few months ago, he relived the day eight people died on the coast of Órzola. "It all comes back to you," he recounts.
Marcos Lemes, two shipwrecks in seven months
Marcos Lemes is the only one of the four who also threw himself back into the sea on June 17, 2021, when another boat capsized and he and a neighbor did not hesitate to jump into the sea again. He was also present when a tuna boat ran aground on the rocks in front of his house. On that occasion, at the beginning of summer, the capsizing of another precarious boat ended the lives of an eight-year-old child, two women, one of them pregnant, and two men.
At that time, with the constant arrival of boats, Lemes lived with noise psychosis. A neighbor called him and told him to look out, that an engine could be heard. Then hell broke loose again. After the November experience, Marcos Lemes had two buggies ready at his door in case he had to jump into the sea. Upon arriving at the area. On that second occasion, the survivors were piled up on a rock. "A horrible feeling," he states.
"My son, my son," a woman shouted in French that night. She was the mother of the eight-year-old minor, whose body appeared on the shore the next day.
The migratory route to the Canary Islands has been the deadliest in Europe for years and one of the deadliest in the world. In 2020, 1,851 people lost their lives trying to reach the archipelago and 45 makeshift boats capsized in search of the islands. The following year, in 2021, 4,016 people died in 124 shipwrecks en route to the Canary Islands. So far this year, 635 people lie at the bottom of the Atlantic.
Thanks to the rest of the neighbors who threw themselves into the sea and contributed with their help to save lives, but who preferred not to participate in this report.
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