"We want to know the truth about why the explosion occurred in La Paloma"

The explosion completely destroyed the internal structure of the fifth floor of the

parish and now the floor is an open space. The distribution it had is perfectly distinguished by the tiling of the floor, of a different color depending on the room. The bathroom and the kitchen were in the checkerboard area; You have to imagine the rooms of the three parish priests who lived here lined up on the tiled sections in cream and gray tones and, next to them, in the right corner, the small room where the only survivor was.

Matías Quintana,

34 years old today, a Paraguayan priest, had spent the entire morning of January 20, 2021 in his room, studying for the Liturgy Liturgy exams he is taking, which is why he moved to Spain in September 2019 .

Around 3:00 p.m., when the explosion occurred, he was eating.

He himself points to where he was sitting, with the back of the chair against the outside wall.

Three months later, they let him go back to the building to look for his documentation and he took a photograph showing the mass of rubble and furniture and the table as he had left it: the yellow tablecloth, a tupperware with macaroni, another with salad. and some bananas already blackened.

"I remember like a

, then I don't see anything because of the dust and then the destruction. The explosion doesn't move me one millimeter, I stay sitting in the chair, but I turn around and see that there are no walls, that behind there is a precipice. If I had moved a little, I would have fallen; a little wind that pushed me and I would have fallen", recounts the moment of the deflagration Father Matías, timid and therefore reluctant to grant interviews. It is the first time that he speaks with a written medium.

The priest thought in those first moments that only his floor had been affected, he was unaware of the magnitude of the explosion and that it would claim four lives: that of his roommate and also a priest

, who would die hours later in the hospital; that of

, an electrician, a friend of Rubén and a regular in the parish, who had come to try to find out where the strong smell of gas that was perceived in the building that day came from; that of the Bulgarian

, who was caught in the doorway by the explosion, at number 98 Calle Toledo in Madrid, and that of

, a bricklayer who worked on a nearby construction site and who, like Stefko, was passing by on the sidewalk .

"The first thing I did was call Gabriel [

, also a priest, responsible for the parish]. He went outside, our eyes met and that calmed me down. 'Gabriel, help me.'

At least he knew he was going to ask for help.

Then I get my bearings, I try to get to the stairs by crawling through the furniture and rubble and I realize that it is full of rubble and that the elevator was not there;

a block of smoke came out of it.

When I realize that it is impossible to escape or go down, at that moment I thought that the entire building could collapse and collapse and that scared me, I thought I was going to die," Matías continues, narrating what he experienced a year ago.

Matías, after the explosion, trapped on the fifth floor.

-second video

that he sent to his family in Paraguay and that went viral.

"Our house just exploded because of the gas pipe and I'm trapped on the fifth floor and there's a fire. I can't go down. So... pray for me, I don't know if they're going to be able to rescue me from here, ha blown up our house," he said.

The next thing he did was lean over the precipice.

"I put myself in that corner," he says, pointing to what was Father

's room .

"I saw that there were firemen outside. I raised my hand. "You go inside, go inside," they told me. "If there's no room, you can't." Besides, I had inhaled a lot of smoke and didn't want to go back, I sat down there".

The image was captured from outside in a photograph that shows the upper floors of the building without walls, as if it were 13 Rue del Percebe, and Matías sitting on the floor, looking out, waiting apparently calm.

He and Father Gabriel, also present at the meeting, laugh as they recall the energy with which Matías jumped into the firefighters' basket at the time of the rescue, about 20 minutes after the explosion.

"A miracle? Yes, indeed, I cannot say anything else because of my condition as a priest, I attribute it to

", he says of his salvation.

The exterior walls that were blown up were provisionally covered by aluminum plates and the laughter of the children from the La Salle school -located one number below- who must be at recess, sneak in between them.

The bathtub of one of the priests and other debris ended up in the courtyard of the center, where another day at that time there would have been children playing basketball, but the snow dumped by

prevented it.

After the explosion, Matías did not hear the children, but he clearly heard the elderly from the La Paloma residence, one number up.

"They started screaming and I realized that it wasn't just my plant, that it was something bigger than the whole building," he says.

Above our heads must have been

, but there is nothing, just a white tent covering the roof.

The explosion completely destroyed it.

The event resulted in four deaths, but there would have been many more if the circumstances had not been aligned so that all those who had to be were not there that day.

Three priests resided on the fifth floor -

the late

and

- and two others on the sixth:

and

.

Father Matías, inside the building, still not rebuilt.

Gabriel had been diagnosed with Covid on Epiphany, so on January 20 he was in his last day of confinement, according to the sanitary measures in force at the time. Since he was positive, his partner Moises had moved to the hotel across the street, which saved him.

," says Father Gabriel, looking at the hole where the sixth floor was. "But they called me to go to the church [located at the other end of the complex, with access to Calle de La Paloma], because a carpenter had come to put some attics on the float of the Virgin of La Paloma."

Father Alejandro had been putting off an appointment to pick up a shower head bought by Wallapop for several days, and he decided to go get it just that noon. The cleaner had had her water cut off so she left a little earlier and the explosion caught her waiting for the bus at the stop. "And the kids came here to study, as if it were a kind of library. About 10 kids came with their tupers, but those days it was suspended because I was with Covid," says Father Gabriel, who explains that some passed through the parish

, from First Communion children to university students, who received catechism, school support or theater classes.

On the way to the meeting with the carpenter, Gabriel Benedicto crossed paths with Rubén and David, two of the deceased, who were in the counseling room. "'What are you doing here?'. It smells like gas!' Rubén and David then went up to the upper floors looking for the source of the leak, they checked Matías' apartment, they looked into his kitchen and left.

Father Gabriel guides us to the street to explain in detail how the explosion occurred.

In the middle of the sidewalk was the gas cap of the

company and under it the valve or tap to which a

must have been connected .

The gas, which weighs less than air, was rising to the upper floors, through the ventilation hole located inside the walls.

-And what caused the gas to explode?

-For the gas to explode there must be a mixture of

and the rest air.

If there is 40% gas, even if you put a bonfire on it, it will not explode, and if there is 5%, neither will it.

Since I smelled gas, I opened the windows of my apartment and Rubén and David also went downstairs opening the windows.

Either that or the presence lights were turned on, because the telephones, which could also have caused it, we verified that they were not used and neither was the elevator -explains Father Gabriel.

Place where Matías was eating when the explosion occurred.

On February 24, 2021,

of Madrid decreed the file of the case, ruling out that any manipulation that could have been done in the Rubén y David facility was the cause of the explosion and declaring it "accidental", caused " due to a natural gas leak. The car attributed the disconnection of the supply tube to "a movement of land in the place" and the police report, according to Gabriel, that a

made it jump.

Both the parish and the families of the victims appealed against the filing of the case, but the Provincial Court rejected their appeal, so they have taken the claim through

. They want it to be investigated if there was negligent action on the part of the supply companies, Naturgy and

. "The firefighters could not even access the key because the lid was dirty, clogged,

.

The court asked Naturgy and the Canal to report on the interventions they had carried out in the area, but they did not provide any documentation and since they did not provide documentation they were not implicated", explains Gabriel Benedicto, who remains that they were denied access to the images of the valve and the tube to carry out your own expert opinion.

The dismissal of the case meant that the parish remained civilly liable for all the damages, valued at millions of euros.

"Why was the tube released?" asks the parish priest of La Paloma.

"I do not want to go against the companies, what I want is to know the truth, which I think is not known, to investigate why the tube was disconnected."

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