In August 2019, a fire of enormous proportions devastated the island of Gran Canaria. I had arrived in Gran Canaria only a few months earlier, after a ten-year absence.
Encrucijada
Immersed as we were in family matters, arrangements, visits, paperwork, we walked around the back of the old “Clínica del Pino” (Holy Virgin of El Pino Clinic), when we listened to the engines of what we soon identified as the fire department’s hydroplanes; that’s how we found out about the fire.
Amerizaje 
On the ground, up in the mountain, the fire department was fighting the flames with all available resources, along with volunteers and the police force. The seaplanes continued flying over the Avenida Marítima, the beautiful promenade along the sea line in Las Palmas, the capital of Gran Canaria. The planes were almost touching the rooftops, as they flew to fill their tanks with sea water, and carrying not only that, water, but the hearts of a small crowd gathered by the dock with flags of the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands.
It was here that the idea of the “Flor Canaria” was born. I also wanted to bring hope to the mountains, my grain of sand would be my “water droplet”.
Mi “Gotita de Agua”
Shortly after the fire was declared extinguished, we went up by car to see the affected areas. We had already seen many photos and reports of the fire and its consequences, but walking on the ashes and contemplating the charred trees I realized that the soil and the people are the same thing: what happens to one necessarily affects the other, sometimes with dire consequences.
Los Pueblos 
I have never read Don Quixote in Spanish, but seeing the images on television, the bravery of those who were fighting against fire and the pilots of those seaplanes, who had to be as exhausted as their land companions, the image of Don Quixote fighting against the mills it came to my mind. I asked for a phrase from Don Quixote in Spanish and I found: “Oh memory, enemy of my rest!” Yes, that was perfect: memory should help us not to forget this terrible lesson, not to rest until we find solutions to the terrible fate that our planet suffers. Gran Canaria will serve as a reminder.
Carretera Cerrada 
The wind, which serves as a source of energy, and which feeds the wind fields as it fed Don Quixote’s mills, can also feed the flames. When I visited the devastation that the fire bequeathed to us, I stopped along the way to take some last photos: I no longer wanted to see more after two days documenting myself and collecting materials. I saw how in some areas the wind had brought the flames to the doors of the houses, and how it had not only burned, but also left a trail of decomposing vegetation, literally half-cooked. The smell went far.
Cactus Asado
Near Tamadaba I found what was perhaps the saddest thing of all: a recently planted tree had been affected by the flames and completely dry. The protective fence around him no longer made any sense, other than that of a macabre aesthetic, sculpted by smoke and flames. I want my “Flor Canaria” to remind us, with its turning, that its colors of sun, sea, and perhaps wind, are our present and future, but that future must be cared for from the smallest to the largest.
El Pequeño Árbol 
