Driving up the mountain, heading for Andorra, I distract my gaze as I pass by the Baells reservoir, beyond Cercs.
The scene overwhelms me and I want to see more, but I better stop being a jerk while I’m driving and pull over.
So I stop.
I stop the car at a viewpoint and, finally, with an open grave I contemplate the scene.
The view confirms everything that the experts have been telling us on television.
The reservoir is at 26% of its capacity.
The reservoir is a large puddle and, where there used to be water, there is now a quagmire of cracked earth crowned by a building: proudly, the Abbey of Sant Salvador de la Vedella stands where it once drowned.
And I don’t see rowers or sailboats or water skiers, and I wonder if there will be pike, catfish and trout left in those waters, since they barely have anywhere to swim, that’s a big puddle.
(…)
The image of the water skier comes to mind because I am heading to Grandvalira. I’m going to cover the finals of the Alpine Ski World Cup, which started yesterday.
The issue of skiing is a blessing for Andorra, which takes the issue as something personal, just as it takes all these issues. I myself had been able to verify it four years ago, in other World Cup finals in Soldeu and El Tarter, in 2019, when Marcel Hirscher, the best skier of the moment, had said:
–This place is prepared to offer the best conditions.
That phrase had been magnificent, a push for Andorrans in the uncertainty of skiing, because even then the wisest told us:
“Soon the days of the great drought will come.
Drought?
Contemplating the reservoir in that 2019, the skeptic gave free rein to his skepticism.
Who’s talking about drought?
The La Baells reservoir looked golden!
From a bird’s eye view, the observer could just make out the peak of the abbey. The sailboats sailed happily. The catfish gobbled up double cheeks. Everything was great in the place, that was a reservoir as God intended, a reservoir at 98% of its capacity.
Well: these are the days of the great Mikaela Shiffrin (the best skier in history), but also those of the great drought, and now I have stopped at a viewpoint overlooking La Baells Abbey, and standing there I wonder where are we going, because in a few days spring will spread and the snows from the mountains will descend and rest in the reservoirs, and then those same waters will be lost in the night of time, like C rays that shine in the dark, near from the Tannhäuser gate.
