At 81 years old, the missionary José Javier Parladé assures that his original intention was not to leave Sudan, despite the fact that the bloody combats between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary forces are littering the streets of the capital with corpses. “But they convinced me for security. I have agreed to come to Spain on vacation until the conflict is over,” the Sevillian sneered, hours after landing at the Torrejón de Ardoz base (Madrid). That was the end of the complicated military operation that has managed to evacuate 72 civilians –34 of them Spanish– without incident.

The Non-Combatant Personnel Rescue operation – NEO, for its acronym in English – began last Friday with the pre-positioning in Djibouti of a first A400 aircraft, to which an Airbus A330 and two other A400s were later added. A supposed three-day ceasefire for the end of Ramadan suggested that the operation could start quickly. But security conditions did not allow it until Sunday afternoon. Inside Sudan, the Spanish embassy coordinated the regrouping of people who asked to leave the country.

Parladé, who had his residence in Bahari – one of the areas most affected by the guerrillas – was promised that a vehicle would come to pick him up. Him and other volunteers with whom he had grouped. But that car never showed up. “At twelve we were there, but they did not arrive.” “After eating we go, and neither,” he recalls. And in that wait, his building was bombed, leaving him without water or electricity. “We decided that we had to flee yes or yes.” With two reeds and a white sheet they improvised a flag that they took from the car with which they headed for Omdurman, a large neighborhood with more inhabitants than Khartoum where Italian residents who wanted to leave the country were gathering.

With the windows open and not accelerating too much so as not to raise unfounded suspicions, the Comboni missionary who had been in Sudan for more than half a century saw devastating images. “No one was seen. The Sudanese have disappeared, they have gone in horror to their hometowns, ”he describes. He does not estimate the exact time that this ordeal on wheels lasted, but he does remember that the paramilitaries who have taken over the city stopped them at every corner, having to explain that their house had been bombed and they had to leave. Of course, he assures that, at no time, did he fear for his life: “Firstly because I am old and I am already prepared for whatever. Second, because I have never had fears of that type.

Parladé met on the same Sunday afternoon in Omdurman with a group of Italians who were also evacuated. “I thought we had missed the plane,” says the missionary. However, the operation was not yet complete.

The armed forces had positioned an A400 with two Vamtac vehicles (all-terrain vehicles intended for the military) and special operations personnel to protect the convoy at the Wadi Seidna military airport, north of Khartoum. “When I saw the planes, the first thing I asked was if there were Spanish soldiers. They said yes, and they immediately brought me to a doctor who was interested in my health.”

Yesterday, “already rested”, Parladé says that his intention is to return. “I had it all there”