Floods in Spain: Barcelona airport under water

Six days after the floods which left at least 217 dead in Spain, emergency services continued their search in the Valencia region on Monday, while downpours fell on Barcelona, ​​without causing any casualties.

The day after a chaotic day, during which an angry crowd greeted with insults and mud throwing the visit of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and King Felipe VI to one of the localities most affected by the floods, the priority remains the location of the missing.

And if the Spanish meteorological agency (Aemet) officially assured Monday morning that the situation of “meteorological crisis” had ended in the Valencia region, the concern moved some 350 km further north, to Barcelona, ​​placed on red alert.

Torrential rains led to cancellations or very significant delays for around fifty flights at the airport. Seventeen flights had to be diverted. High-speed train traffic between Barcelona and Madrid was also disrupted.

Impressive images, widely relayed on social networks, also showed vehicles blocked on a highway near the Catalan capital or flooded streets in neighboring towns. The Aemet red alert ended at 2 p.m. (1 p.m. GMT).

Residents are still missing

Last week’s devastating floods left at least 217 dead: 213 in the Valencia region alone, three in Castile-la-Mancha and one in Andalusia.

But the final death toll could be higher: an unspecified number of residents are still missing and many underground car parks, completely flooded, have not yet been completely inspected.

The authorities are particularly concerned about the situation of the underground parking lot in Bonaire, a vast shopping center in Aldaia, a town of 31,000 inhabitants in the suburbs of Valencia. With a capacity of 5,700 places, almost half of which are underground, the latter is completely flooded.

“It can be terrible”

“The shopping center is devastated in its upper part. And down there is a terrible unknown. We are not sure what we will find,” Aldaia Mayor Guillermo Lujan told public television TVE. “We want to be careful” but “it can be terrible.”

In recent days, the personnel of the Military Emergency Unit (UME), which intervenes during natural disasters, have installed numerous pumps to begin to evacuate the water.

Divers have managed to penetrate the underground, without spotting any bodies so far. Late Monday morning, police confirmed that they had not found any victims in the first 50 vehicles inspected.

In the localities most affected by the floods, anger and distress predominate, six days after the tragedy. Many streets remain clogged with piles of cars, mud and trash, and homes without telephones or electricity. “I was born here and I lost everything,” Teresa Gisbert, a resident of Sedavi, another disaster-stricken town in the suburbs of Valencia, told AFP.

In his house, a meter-long dark line of mud is visible where the water has penetrated. “They told us ‘rain alert’ but they should have told us about ‘flood’,” laments this 62-year-old woman.

On Sunday, this feeling of helplessness turned into a flood of anger when King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia went with Pedro Sánchez and the conservative president of the Valencia region Carlos Mazón to Paiporta, a municipality considered to be the epicenter of tragedy.

“Assassins! Assassins!”, shouted exasperated residents. Some people threw mud and various objects at the procession, while insults were poured out against the Prime Minister and Mr. Mazón, who were quickly evacuated by the security services.

In this extremely tense context, the sovereigns received mud on their faces and clothes, an episode undoubtedly without precedent in the history of the Spanish monarchy. Visibly moved, but unmoved, they stayed for an hour to talk to residents before leaving.

Transport Minister Oscar Puente admitted on television that this trip had perhaps not been organized at the best time, admitting “a possible error”.

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