Villahermosa is a neighborhood on the outskirts of Cartagena de Indias that does not respond to its name. Sandy streets that become muddy during the nine months of rain that the wet season in Colombia lasts, houses built with remains of wood and sheet metal roofs. Of course, all distributed in a perfect Spanish grid. In the midst of all this misery, Doris perfectly remembers the day in 2019 when a tap, for the first time, gave water in her house. Single mother of two teenagers, half paralyzed by heart disease, she still gets emotional and looks up at the sky as she recounts this miracle. Before, it was not easy for her: she walked for more than two hours every day carrying 20-liter drums to bring water to her family.
Villahermosa, a neighborhood of 6,400 inhabitants, has the luxury of water in their homes thanks to the Spanish Cooperation. Do you remember the first day you turned on a faucet? The first to fill your bathtub? This is a novelty in much of Colombia. The Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation allocated more than 7 million euros in the Expansion program of the El Bosque Water Treatment Plant and Supply in the neighborhoods of the southwestern area of ??Cartagena de Indias. It has been five years of work to ensure that families obtain the dignity provided by drinking water. Because they survived thanks to a tanker truck and with the water assigned to them they cooked, drank, showered and used the remains for the toilet cistern. There was no sewage system and the feces were deposited in plastic bags that were thrown at the neighbor, with the consequent health problems and neighborhood conflict that this entails. Everything forgotten thanks to the taps placed by Spain, one Tuesday morning Queen Doña Letizia got to know their stories and their sandy streets accompanied by Verónica Alcocer, first lady of Colombia.
Spain agreed on a Country Association Framework with Colombia for the period 2021-2024 with an initial budget of 120 million euros, the highest for cooperation in Latin America, for the 57 projects that are underway.
In addition to expanding the purification plant, raw and potable water storage tanks, pumping stations, electrical substations, and a sludge treatment plant were built. 2,100 linear meters of pipes were installed to interconnect the new system with the existing one, 15.6 kilometers of networks and 1,910 home connections. Lastly, 20.4 kilometers of sewage system networks, 171 inspection cameras and 2,291 house searches.
The water has allowed things that in Spain seem so banal such as having bathrooms in schools and that girls, on menstruation days, can continue their education. For this reason, a group of schoolchildren from the Villahermosa Metropolitan School rehearsed a “thank you to the Queen of Spain” in chorus before Doña Letizia arrived. There were also nerves in the houses, whose hygiene and quality of life have changed radically. Milady told it, mother of four children, with a five-month-old in her arms, who was entertaining herself at the doors of her house with the security transfer. Also Heidi, mother of two daughters who proudly opened the shower in her bathroom, because bathrooms and kitchens have also been built. The wife of Felipe VI, who during these days lives with the aid worker’s vest on, was interested in the improvements that the water has brought to the neighborhood.
In addition to the Water and Sanitation initiative, the Queen had an intense day this Tuesday that began early in the morning at the Cooperation Training Center, a clear example of a circular project. Because the AECID rented to the archdiocese what was the old convent of Santo Domingo. In the Workshop School they trained students to restore it. From there, Latin American countries are helped to modernize their democracies, with training courses for elites and senior local officials. Thus, members of the General Council of the Judiciary and the Ministry of the Interior travel from Spain… who meet with their counterparts to teach them. In 2022, 3 million euros were allocated to this training center and 1,200 officials took courses.
At the close of this edition, Doña Letizia had lunch with the first lady, before facing the afternoon session. The Queen visited the Escuela Taller, created in 1992 with the support of the Spanish Cooperation with the aim of contributing to training for work and generating opportunities for young people at risk of social exclusion. It is a clear example of how the National Cooperation works, since once supervised, with a budget of five million euros, the Colombian Government has continued the project, which has trained more than 7,500 young people.
Doña Letizia has seen how they teach trades, from carpentry to cooking, and how they apply it in their lives. The day, in fact, continued in the afternoon with a visit to the tourist bastion of Santa Catalina, part of the Cartagena fortification built by the Italian Cristóbal de Roda in 1625 and restored by Juan de Herrera a century later. Now, in 2023, it is the boys who are trained in the workshop school who preserve this heritage from the colonial era so photographed by tourists.
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