"We warned that the neighbor would burn the building, but nobody did anything"

The residents of Calle València, 73 had been notifying the authorities for several days that the owner of the bar below was threatening to burn the building down. The woman, a Chinese national and who used Google translate to communicate, challenged the tenants with messages written on the blackboard where the lunch menus were offered. “I’m going to burn down the bar. I know your plan, I will do it before you come in, ”she warned.

Iliana, the president of the community, remembers that she called the Urban Police five times and Ligia, the neighbor of the principal, the same number. Just one day before the events, both went to the Mossos to report the threats. Ligia adds that they were told that “until they had burned the building” they could not file a complaint. “When I burn the block, I’ll come looking for you so you can take care of me,” she answered them.

The owner of the bar burned down the building the next day. On April 12 of last year at 3:40 in the morning. Neighbors fled as they could from their homes after hearing a loud explosion. “It looked like a bomb,” they recall. The fire spread rapidly, the hanging clothes served as fuel and the light well became a chimney. Four neighbors suffered serious burns, a puppy died, the flames reached the top of the building and spread for several blocks of the same block. The neighbors took refuge on the roof, the only space in which they were safe, nervously dodging several fireballs.

The first floor collapsed from the explosion. Most lost everything. Their memories, part of their lives, were buried in the rubble. And they had to leave the farm during the six months that the reforms lasted. Half a year in the house of relatives or in rented flats.

Now, a year later, the court has closed the criminal case opened against the woman from the bar, considering that she suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and was unaware of what she was doing. “Proceed to file the case for sudden dementia,” says the order. The residents accept the judicial decision, but regret that they had not acted before when they launched their first notices.

The owner of the bar had been involved in several incidents. She had thrown crystal glasses at passersby on the street and impregnated paper napkins with oil, which she then glued to the wall of the bar with the intention of setting it on fire. She suffered from a mental illness that no one had diagnosed, but those incidents did not serve to cause the authorities to react. “I knew that the lady was not a bad person, but rather that she had an outbreak, but nobody did anything,” laments Ligia. No one cared for that lady due to her illness and the Urban Police, after one of her notices, appeared and informed the owner that they would seal the premises due to lack of sanitation. This process lasted a few days. And in that period of time, the owner of the bar burned down the farm. “The neighbors think that the procedure has failed and could have been avoided. Something in the system has failed, but we cannot accuse anyone”, emphasizes Iliana.

The floor of Ligia’s house was the roof of the bar and it jumped through the air. Fortunately, they were in Galicia on Easter holidays. “When they woke me up at dawn, I already imagined that something had happened with the woman downstairs,” she recalls. The young woman was going to get married and she had everything prepared. Her wedding ring, her future husband’s watch, and all of her clothing were charred and she was thrown into a bin that was set up in front of the block. The next day, the jewelry that was saved and was in the container disappeared. Nobody guarded them and someone stole them.