Coincidences are not coincidences. This is what W. G. Sebald concluded, remembers Enrique Vila-Matas in his novel Montevideo, and Marta Vilaseca and Guillem Molinàs testify with their own existential story.
Starting from environments as different as Sant Pere de Riudebitlles, a small town in Alt Penedès, and from Barcelona, from a wealthy family, for one reason or another, the two found their place in the world on the Hawaiian island of Maui a couple of years ago. of decades.
Although they were unaware of it in their day, it was no coincidence that chance or destiny led them to that point on the atlas, a paradise in which they felt welcomed. Today they live under the weight of the tragedy caused by the fast and voracious fire declared on August 8th. "You won't believe it, but the whole town burned down in an hour," recalls Vilaseca in a video call from his apartment, about three kilometers from Lahaina, the center of the devastation.
Molinàs, a painter and sculptor, decided to pack his bags when the Barcelona gallery where he worked closed in the mid-nineties. He went to New York. He tells by phone that he was fine, but the Twin Towers fell in the 2001 attacks and the gallery that represented him disappeared. He returned to Catalonia. He did things in the Vall d'Aran, he settled on a boat in Port Vell in the Catalan capital until a friend suggested that he travel to Maui. Here it is, 20 years later. He fell in love with a local woman (his English teacher), they had a daughter. They reside on the north coast, 25 kilometers from the ancient capital of the kingdom of Hawaii, which he calls "ground zero." History repeats itself. The Bill Wyland gallery has become a jumble of iron, ruins, where a bronze statue survives as an allegory. “I've lost all my work for the last seven years,” he complains, though he knows he can tell.
He went to Lahaina almost daily, since Bill Wyland is where he does his creative work. That day she stayed at home. There was another fire in the mountain area, they cut off the power supply and suspended school. “I can say that my daughter saved my life,” she says.
Despite the fact that the downtown area, where there were some thirty galleries on the street facing the ocean, was closed, Molinàs managed to enter. "I couldn't believe that I had lost it, I wanted to see it with my own eyes," he confesses. The destruction was far greater than he imagined. In the official list there are 114 certified deceased and a list containing the names of 850 disappeared. "That was an oven, like a crematorium, they will never find these people, they are ashes," he laments.
It is illustrated by Vilaseca (he arrived here thanks to Molinàs, "we are both Catalans in Maui"). At five in the morning on the 9th, someone knocked on the door of his apartment. It was her friend Robin of hers, who told her, "I just went through hell." Robin escaped from the house of an acquaintance, Carol, today in the group of 114. Her roommate is among the missing.
Vilaseca arrived in Barcelona at the age of 19. She worked as a secretary for an architect, she helped build structures for the 1992 Olympic Games ceremonies. She then tried London and made the leap to California. She was offered to go to the rescue of a ship on Oahu (capital Honolulu) and one island she took to the other, Maui. "The worst that could happen is that I stayed in Hawaii and I thought it would be great," she stresses after 23 years.
She has always lived in Lahaina, where her good sewing hand has allowed her to open a shop where she makes custom boat umbrellas and other accessories. But the city is expensive and four years ago he bought a flat in an affordable area. One of the circumstances that this fire has revealed is the lack of housing for tourism workers. There is fear that the closure of that ground zero due to the supposed toxicity is an excuse to expropriate the residents (there are some 1,900 displaced by the fire) and speculate with a space next to the coast, highly coveted for its location.
"Hawaiians tell you, 'We've lost everything, we're alive.' They value the land –continues Vilaseca–, they see it as something they have to take care of instead of owning”.
