By Richard Hogenkamp·1 hour ago·Amended: 2 minutes ago
RTL
More severe weather and flooding in Spain today in the northeast, near the Catalan city of Girona. The third severe storm in a week and a half is causing fear and anger among Spaniards, because no warning was given for today’s storm.
Near Girona, more than 120 millimeters of rain fell in some places during the night and early morning. That is the same amount of rain that normally falls in that part of Spain in the months of November, December and January combined. In the coastal town of Cadaqués, water swirled through the streets, sweeping dozens of cars away, as seen in this video posted by a resident on his X account. One of the cars has a Dutch license plate.
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According to Mayor Pia Serinyana of Cadaqués, the flooding was extra intense because the cars ended up in exactly the wrong place. “The thirty or so cars blocked the underpass of the last bridge before the water reached the sea,” says Serinyana. ”They thus became an unwanted dam, causing the water in the center of Cadaqués to rise extra high. It couldn’t go anywhere.”
No weather alarm
No weather alarm was issued for the severe weather last night and this morning. Several meteorologists from the Catalonia region announced on their social media that the large amount of rain came as a complete surprise to them.
In the southeast of Spain, where 222 people died last week due to severe weather and flooding, a heated discussion about the weather alarm has been going on for days. That was eventually given there, but very late. Some people already had water up to their knees when they received the weather alarm on their phone.
New spontaneous protests
Anger over late alarms or not issued at all is growing rapidly among the Spanish population. There is also anger about the slow and apparently uncoordinated assistance. Last night there was a spontaneous demonstration in Barcelona. That city was hit by severe weather on Monday.
Barcelona residents demanded more decisive action by Catalan regional president Salvador Illa during the noise protest. He responded this afternoon, but probably not with the kind of words the demonstrators had hoped for. Defending the way he acted, Illa said people “must not forget that we are vulnerable, that there is no such thing as zero risk.”
