The inhabitants of Valencia are in danger again. Two weeks after the deadly floods in the south-east of Spain, the coastline of the Valencia region, hit by new torrential rains, was placed on red alert on Wednesday evening.
“The danger is extreme. Avoid travel. River overflows and flooding may occur,” warned the Spanish Meteorological Agency (Aemet). The red alert, the maximum possible level, was activated at 9 p.m. and will remain in effect until midday on Thursday.
“Exceptional” measures after criticism
Up to 180 millimeters of rain could fall in twelve hours on the Valencia coastline. This led the authorities to issue traffic restrictions and suspend classes this Thursday in more than a hundred municipalities, some already affected by the floods of October 29, which left at least 223 dead.
Only travel for “cases of force majeure” is authorized, announced on X the conservative president of the Valencia region Carlos Mazón, widely criticized for his lack of responsiveness and his chaotic management of the floods at the end of October. These measures are “exceptional” and aim to “ensure the safety of people”.
Due to the torrential rains, rail traffic between Barcelona and Valencia was also suspended, while the restart of trains on the Madrid-Valencia line, scheduled for this Thursday morning, was postponed.
Part of Andalusia also in red
Due to this new “cold drop”, an isolated high altitude depression quite common in autumn on the Spanish Mediterranean coast, the meteorological agency has also placed the Andalusian province of Malaga on red alert, until 8 a.m. Thursday. “Today, Malaga is paralyzed,” declared the president of the Andalusia region, Juan Manuel Moreno, during a trip to Seville. “Prevention is better than cure, we saw it in Valencia,” he insisted.
In the city, where several roads were flooded, the metro was closed, the train line to Madrid was suspended and several flights were canceled or diverted. More than 4,200 people were also evacuated “preventatively”, according to the authorities.
The red alert issued during the day for the province of Tarragona, in the northeast of the country, was downgraded to the orange level.
Our file on natural disasters
In Paiporta, a town in the suburbs of Valencia considered to be the epicenter of the disaster of October 29, residents had set up makeshift barricades with bags of earth in front of the doors of houses on Wednesday morning, with the fear, in particular, of see the sewers still blocked by mud overflow. These new rains have affected search operations for the 17 people still missing, concentrated mainly around waterways and on the coast, at river mouths.
