The cousin of a Spanish woman who was one of the two victims of the Zurrieq double-decker crash has written to The Malta Independent to describe how she was “always full of joy, facing with her big smile even the most difficult situations in life.”
Elisaveta Avdala, 37, died on Monday when the double-decker she was on crashed into a tree in Zurrieq. She died on site. Another man, a Belgian, also died in the accident.
The cousin, Petia Rousseva, also sent photos of the victim, and they are being reproduced here. Some of the photos were taken in Malta.
The letter as received by The Malta Independent is as follows:
“Hello. We are contacting you as relatives of the second victim of the accident on the tourist bus that happened on Monday in Zurrieq. My name is Petia Rousseva and I am a cousin of Elisaveta Avdala who died on the spot in this misfortunate event.
On my behalf and on the behalf of all her friends and relatives I would like to drop to you a few lines on her life and personality as we do consider that neither her, nor her absurd death should be forgotten.
Eli was a person larger than life, always full of joy, facing with her big smile even the most difficult situations in life. The love she had in her for everyone around her was enormous such was also her desire to explore the world.
An always learning personality, she never stopped to learn, travel, improve.
Eli was an entrepreneur, life coach and a teacher in Barcelona, where she had been living in the past 17 years of her life. A person full of energy and with enormous circle of friends and relatives all over the world. Eli was a Bulgarian of Jewish origin, living in Spain for the last 17 years so she leaves hundreds of people all around the world devastated from her death. A true citizen of the world, an inspiration for the women around showing what it meant to be a strong and independent woman .
Very well known in her professional circle in Barcelona, since she had taught hundreds of peoples in English, she had coached hundreds of people how to tackle with their life problems. Now , more than ever we need her knowledge in order to tackle with her loss.
What we feel is profound sorrow and anger. Sorrow and anger because such a young and energetic life was brutally taken away from us. We are decided to find out how the whole story happened and we will seek justice for her death till the end. We will do this because we know that if she was alive she would have done the same. We also want to prevent that because of safety omittance and carelessness another innocent life is taken away. We do not consider reliable some suggestions that appeared in the media that the storm crashed the tree the night before. This was literally the last trip of the bus on the south line since accident happened after 16.00 pm, so the same bus has for sure passed below the deadly tree more than once on the very same day without any accidents reported. Photos we saw suggest that the collision was with one of the main trunks of the tree and was quite strong but we will first wait what the official investigation will tell us.
Eli was supposed to travel back to Spain the same day when incident happened. She was literally spending her last hours before travelling exploring the southern part of the island. She liked Malta so much that she even wanted to move her business there to enjoy the island life and the sea. Unfortunately, none of this will ever happen and we- realtives and friends remain devastated , trying to be strong and to cope with the situation in the way as she always taught us to do it - with smile and positive energy.
We hope the above information can be useful for you to commemorate Eli’s personality on your newspaper and to show your readers what an incredible person she was for all of us. We truly wish all your readers to be good, to be grateful for what they have and if they have so incredible people around them as Eli was this means they are blessed. Stay safe all !
With Regards,
Petia Rousseva
