Recovered from the mud

On 12 November, the EFE agency reported the story of Vicente Tarazona, an 82-year-old resident of Paiporta, who learned to assemble radios at home from a very young age. After retiring, Vicente resumed his hobby and amassed a collection of more than 170 radios, which were flooded entirely in a matter of minutes by the effects of DANA. The water reached the garage ceiling where Vicente had stored and organised them.

The news, published by the EFE agency and reported by many media, reached the eyes of Carmen Bachiller, director of the 'Vicente Miralles Segarra’ Museum of Telecommunications at the School of Telecommunications Engineering (ETSIT) of the Universitat Politècnica de València.

Carmen, who has been in Germany for the last few months, contacted the Communication Area of the UPV to see if there was any way to get in touch with Vicente Tarazona. ‘From the museum, the school and the university, we wanted to contribute to this collection not being lost, and since I read the news, that was our only objective’, says Carmen Bachiller.

Finally, thanks in this case to the help of Carlos Bazarra, a journalist from the EFE Agency, and Javier Alfonso, director of Valencia Plaza, the Communication Area of the UPV put Carmen Bachiller in contact with the Tarazona family. From that moment on, everything started to roll. With the help of a team of volunteers, students from the School of Telecommunications Engineering and the UPV's Master in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage.

After several days of organisation, on Wednesday 20 and Monday 25 November, this team of students, coordinated by Amparo Quilis, Head of Social Action and Volunteering at the UPV, and Carmen Bachiller herself, went to Paiporta to move Vicente Tarazona's collection of radios from the garage of his house in Paiporta to a warehouse donated to the family to store them. A total of 124 radios were moved; the rest disappeared in the water and mud caused by the dana.

From Paiporta to the UPV Museum of Telecommunications

Once in the warehouse, the UPV's Heritage and Art Collections Office classified them according to their state of preservation: green (best condition), yellow and red (worst condition). It also carried out an inventory and cataloguing of each item, compiling information on its year of manufacture, make, model and technical characteristics.

In total, we expect to recover between 80 and 90 pieces,' says Toni Colomina, director of the UPV's Heritage and Art Collections Office.

This work will be carried out by the Research Institute for the Heritage Restoration - UPV. After their intervention, a selection will become part of the collection of the UPV Museum of Telecommunications.

We are committed to the Tarazona family to exhibit them as a testimony of what has happened, to tell the story of the collection and to do our part to ensure that these radios and the legacy of Vicente Tarazona are passed on to future generations in the Museum of Telecommunications," concludes Carmen Bachiller.