LETTER FROM MADRID
Many thought them incapable of abandoning their cell phones for more than 10 minutes, too egocentric and individualistic to get involved in a cause. Their reputation preceded them: fragile, ultra-sensitive, even clumsy. To everyone's surprise, the youngsters gave a great lesson in courage, dedication, and generosity in Valencia, faced with the damage caused by the tragic floods of October 29. "We'll see if people continue to call us the glass generation now...," 19-year-old mechanical engineering student José Catala told Le Monde with a defiant look in his eyes, armed with a shovel and a bucket, his jeans covered in mud. It was November 6, and the young man was one of the battalions of volunteers just out of their teens at work in the devastated town of Algemesi, one of the communities devastated by the two-meter-high wave that burst from the Magre River.
On the cut-off roads leading to the municipalities of the southern suburbs, an army of young people barely into their twenties walking briskly carrying brooms, provisions, and wheelbarrows, or in the muddy streets of the devastated towns, helping the inhabitants to move out their soaked furniture, to pile the destroyed remnants of their pre-flood lives on the sidewalk, to load the backhoes and clean up their homes, were the first to respond in Valencia, often even before the fire department and military arrived on the scene.
"Our youth deserves our praises. Without them, I don't know how we'd get by," said Carmina Redondo, owner of a devastated shop. "My nephew's 17-year-old girlfriend was the one who climbed through the window to unlock the door and help my husband get out of the house," said Emilia Saba, 60, with a shaky voice. In the devastated homes and businesses, many people, with tears in their eyes, welcomed these young people as heroes, about whom – as they sometimes admit – they had very little hope.
"We started by cleaning up our own places, and since then, we've been helping others. A lot of hands are needed around here," said Constantino Lopez, a computer science student at the University of Valencia and Algemesi's neighbor, one week after the floods. Accompanied by his friends, all aged 19 – young men with whom he usually plays the FIFA video game when they are not playing a football match on the municipal terrain transformed into a pool of slush – the student had spent his morning scrubbing, sweeping, and washing the downtown houses of people he didn't know. He confessed he was fed up with the prejudices about his generation. "It's true that the telephone steals a lot of our time, but we're human beings and we know how to help each other when we need to," added Javier Bombas, a Master's student in education.
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