Open the faucet and let water come out; go to the toilet and let the waste go down the drain. Yesterday, the Queen checked how far the miracle of running water that has come true in Villahermosa, a neighborhood located at the southern end of Cartagena (Colombia), where Spanish cooperation has launched a project that has improved access to drinking water for the more than 150,000 people who live there and has radically changed the lives of more than six thousand people, whose precarious homes had, until now, neither running water nor a sanitation system , nor access to sewers.
During the tour of the neighborhood, Letícia was accompanied by Verónica Alcocer, wife of President Gustavo Petro, who already received her on Monday night when she arrived in Cartagena. Both when she arrived and yesterday, the Queen inquired about the condition of the four siblings rescued from the jungle after surviving a plane crash, and congratulated the First Lady on the efforts made to look for the children.
In Cartagena it rains almost every day, but in Villahermosa the abundant Caribbean water circulated, muddied and, when things went well, filled the tanks (many plastic, most at risk of contamination) that the residents of the neighborhood had at home his There was no running water, no sewers, no sanitation. Villahermosa, a neighborhood that has been formed in recent decades with Colombians displaced from areas destroyed by guerrillas, paramilitaries and narcotics, does not live up to its name due to its precarious constructions, in some cases subhuman, and urban disorder, but it is an example of dignity due to the struggle of the neighbors to improve living conditions. As a neighbor told La Reina yesterday: "What's more beautiful than water coming out of the tap and children being able to go to school clean".
The Spanish Agency for Cooperation and Development (ACEID) has financed the project with seven million euros provided by the Cooperation Fund for Water and Sanitation. Yesterday, the Secretary of State, Pilar Cancela, explained the process on site to the Queen, together with those responsible for the project. Letícia, always curious, entered some of the homes where access to water is already possible and also the neighborhood school, where she spoke with teachers and students. Until recently, they did it with the tanks that, from time to time, filled a tanker truck or by accumulating water in buckets.
From Villahermosa, a poor neighborhood that survives as best it can, the Queen, with the entire entourage of red vests, went to the most emblematic area of the Colombian city, the colonial part, Spanish heritage and world heritage, in the care and conservation of which Aceid also intervenes. Letícia and the Colombian first lady, who had lunch together in the old colonial house of the Marquès de Valdehoyos (today a residence of illustrious guests), visited the Escuela Taller, an initiative launched by Spain in 1992, and which is now managed by the Colombian state, to train young people at risk of social exclusion in the professions of heritage restoration and conservation.
