"He asked a passerby for his tie and made a tourniquet"

Lleida / AitonaThe town where it hit hardest the serious bus accident this Wednesday in Lleida was Aitona. Both the driver and the instructor accompanying her live in this farming town and many of the passengers in the damaged vehicle were also going to work, especially in fruit warehouses or to harvest in the immense fruit fields of Baix Segrià. This midday, the neighbors of the town approached the wife of the injured driver, Marcelo, who lost a leg in the accident and remains hospitalized at the Arnau de Vilanova Hospital, to give her encouragement. "They are a beautiful family," summarized a neighbor.

"We are destroyed, they have ruined our lives," confessed to ARA the wife of the Romanian instructor, who landed in Ponent in 2000, a year before her. His driving experience meant that he always "got the job" of instructing the newest drivers. And this Wednesday the same thing happened. He sat next to the new driver, who had only been with the company for three days, and, one minute after leaving the new bus station, he saw how the vehicle lost control and crashed into the wall of the Diputació de Lleida.

The ones who came out worse off were the passengers in the front right of the vehicle. And Marcelo was there. "He didn't lose consciousness at any moment. He dragged himself out as best he could," explained his partner while one of his children (they have four between them) was talking non-stop on the phone. In the midst of the chaos, while the emergency services were on their way, the man had the presence of mind to "ask a pedestrian" who had approached him for "a tie" and "make a tourniquet," while the driver at the wheel lay crying by his side and apologizing to him. The woman felt guilty for what had happened, but especially for what she had caused to the companion who was instructing her.

For much of Wednesday morning, Marcelo's wife was at the Arnau de Vilanova Hospital without knowing what had happened, first fearing that her partner had "perforated his thorax". After a few hours of "anguish", she learned that he had lost his leg. One day after the accident, he was beginning to come to terms with everything. Even knowing that her life would take a radical turn from now on, the woman clung to hope.

"He has a lot of strength, we will get through this," the woman confessed through tears, while receiving the warmth of the town's mayor. A few minutes later, without stopping to receive the tokens of support from the neighbours, she crossed the road that divides the town in two halves to go to the tobacconist's to buy something. Fifty metres away, a bus from line 126, the same one that had an accident yesterday and on which her husband was travelling, was advancing along the same road.