In the Soterrani bar, which is just behind the Camarles Town Hall, the Camarles Football Club scarves are sold for five euros and the shirts for 25. They have the same colors as Barcelona, ??blue and red. This Monday the conversations are in a low voice. In whispers. And everyone in front of the coffee with milk or the cortado, talks about the same thing, about the tragedy that has shaken this small municipality of 2,400 inhabitants in Baix Ebre, Tarragona, where absolutely everyone knows each other and what’s more, in one way or another , they are related.
Mayor Ramon Brull has practically not slept since yesterday afternoon he learned of the tragedy that has devastated the municipality. Three young people, aged twelve and 15, died on Sunday afternoon when the vehicle in which El Pinell de Brai was traveling invaded the opposite direction and plunged to the bottom of a 30-meter ravine on TV-3022. The vehicle exploded, caught fire and three of the occupants died virtually on the spot. The 19-year-old driver was thrown from the car and remains admitted to the Vall d’Hebron burn unit. His prognosis is serious. The vehicle was part of a caravan of four others that was heading to the neighboring town to see the football game that the Camarles team was going to play against the El Pinell team, in the Catalan fourth category. “It was a party. We went first and the others second. Half Camarles was there. Some went by bus and others by private car,” José Bartomeu, secretary of Camarles F.C., explained to La Vanguardia, but who was previously a player, coach and now grandfather of a child player in which the twelve-year-old victim was. He finds it hard to hold back the tears. He still doesn’t believe it, like the rest of the town.
The mayor joins the conversation at the gates of the consistory, a pilgrimage center this Monday for many residents in search of information that will help them understand an inexplicable misfortune. The investigation is in the hands of the traffic division of the Mossos d’Esquadra, which throughout this Monday will take statements from several witnesses. These are the drivers and occupants of the cars that were driving just in front of and behind the damaged vehicle. “It’s not a bad road,” says José Bartomeu. And it’s unlikely they were speeding because they were literally boxed in by the other two cars. The distraction hypothesis is looming in the conversations, although with three deaths prudence and respect for the police investigation prevail.
Hugo is one of the waiters at the Soterrani bar. On Sunday he was in El Pinell playing the game with the Camarles shirt. They went zero to zero. A highly contested match between the two teams and with the stands bursting with fans. “Immediately we realized that something was happening. But we didn’t know what. The people in the stands were nervous. In the end, the El Pinell coach told us. ‘Something must have happened, for sure'”, he tells this diary. At the half-time break, the two coaches and the referees met with the players from both teams and told them that there had been an accident and that three kids had died, and a fourth was seriously injured. “Just playing there were seven relatives of one of the dead kids,” Hugo details. In the stands the sister of another. The field was evicted in a silence broken by the first tears.
Ramon Brull was trying this morning to manage through an interlocutor with the families the next steps of the municipality. If they wish to hold a joint ceremony, the municipal pavilion will be set up to host the tribute of a very soccer town broken with pain. “We had never experienced anything like it,” explains the mayor. 35 years ago, two young men from Barcelona related to Camarles families died in a traffic accident. “But this time it’s been worse. So small, so full of life. We’ve seen them grow.”
