A silent tribute to those who today have lost everything in the wildfires that are ravaging Spain.
A story about the fragility of memory, the grief left by the flames, and the symbolic power of a soup tureen that, against every fire, resists as the last refuge of life, affection, and family heritage.
By Nuria Ruiz Fdez
HoyLunes – Margarita clings to her soup tureen as if it were the only thing she had left in the world… and in truth, it is.
The day before, the heat was suffocating, and she was preparing garlic soup. Her husband had always loved that touch of mint she added at the end, like a fresh breeze in the middle of summer. The countryside was dry, parched, and Margarita knew what that meant: if the brush wasn’t cleared, if the goats didn’t graze, the hillsides turned into gunpowder. Too many summers had passed with her heart in suspense, praying that the fire would not devour the land.
She took the soup tureen from the cabinet in the living room—the one she hardly ever used—and poured the steaming soup into it. Every time she held it in her hands, she remembered her wedding: simple, without an extravagant party, and the only gift that remained intact in her memory. Her mother had placed it in her hands, as if passing on a sacred secret.
– Take this, daughter. This tureen was given to me by your grandmother—and to her by hers. It’s a little chipped, but this tureen is our whole life in the countryside. Never forget that.
And Margarita kept it as one protects a secret that spans generations. Yesterday, without knowing exactly why, she decided to use it.
The dining room filled with the aroma of garlic and mint, and the smoke from the soup rose in spirals, as if it wanted to write the memory of her loved ones in the air. The clinking of spoons against plates suddenly brought back the memory of the last meal with her mother: sipping the soup slowly, as if it were a unique delicacy, and smiling with the lightness of someone already preparing to say goodbye. Later, reclining on the sofa, she had squeezed her hand, sealing with that gesture a silent farewell.
But yesterday at noon was different: the silence smelled of burning. Through the window came a dry air that scraped the throat. Margarita dropped her spoon, went to the door, and saw it: blue tongues, glowing embers, dark smoke climbing into the sky.
-Drop everything, the countryside is dying! Grab buckets of water, there’s no time!
The spoons fell, the soup curdled, and in seconds everything was suffocating chaos. The flames charged relentlessly, black claws tearing at the scrub, and the water vanished on contact, as if the fire drank first.
-You must leave, in a few hours this will be hell!” shouted the firefighters.
Margarita didn’t listen. She could only think of the tureen, alone, abandoned inside the house. She had to save it.
-Where are you going, Mom? Are you crazy?
-No, daughter. Before I leave, I have to fetch something.
Her husband didn’t try to stop her: he knew her, he knew what she was capable of, and in silence, he understood. Then he saw her run toward the house, but before she could reach it, a tongue of fire fell mercilessly, like a claw, onto the roof. The smoke blinded her, filled her lungs, and the firefighters dragged her out by force.
-Let me go! Let me die in my house!
No one listened.
She spent the night in the shelter set up by the town hall, alongside her husband and daughter. The air was thick with laments and ashes that flew like orphaned birds, settling on the floor, on the blankets, on closed eyelids.
At dawn, Margarita returned to what was left of her home. She walked among smoldering ruins, twisted beams, and the smell of scorched earth. And there, in the middle of the charred living room, she saw it: the tureen. Stained with dead embers, with its golden edges shining in jagged streaks, it still stood upright on the table, as if waiting to be saved.
The cameras focus on her: Margarita, holding her tureen, appears in every newscast. She is the image of the fire in the news. And while the spotlights surround her, she hears nothing. She weeps. Her gaze drifts into the horizon, now a cemetery of blackened trunks, a still sea where no bird sings anymore.
In her arms, the tureen weighs more than ever, as if inside it preserved the memory of her loved ones, intact against oblivion. Margarita presses it to her chest: the only thing left standing, the only thing that still resists when everything else lies turned into errant dust, scattered by the wind, like an endless mourning.
#hoylunes, #nuria_ruiz_fdez,
