Thousands of residents in southern Spain were evacuated from their homes on Wednesday due to a red weather alert for heavy rain and storms, just a fortnight after the worst flooding the country has seen in decades, which cost the lives of at least 220 people and caused considerable damage.
Emergency services in the Malaga region, which includes the tourist resorts of Marbella, Velez and Estepona, evacuated around 3,000 people staying in houses at high risk of flooding located near the Guadalhorce River.
The region is expected to be hit hardest this week by the extreme weather phenomenon known locally as DANA.
The Spanish meteorological agency AEMET placed Tuesday nine communities on red or orange alert for severe storms and heavy or torrential rain. These alerts concern Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and parts of the provinces of Valencia and Andalusia.
Although this latest weather front is not expected to be as devastating as the one that hit the Valencia region two weeks ago, weather experts fear it could cause more damage and disruption to flood-affected areas.
Thus, the emergency committee of Valencia declared that the impact of further rains in the region could be serious due to the large quantities of mud already present on the ground and the poor state of the sewage system.
Several municipalities located in areas affected by flooding or covered by weather alerts have canceled non-essential events, and asked the population to work from home and suspend classes. Volunteers were asked to stop ongoing cleaning operations.
Spanish authorities were quick to act this timeafter the response to heavy flooding in late October was widely criticized by the public and opposition lawmakers as slow and chaotic.
Valencia leader Carlos Mazón is facing growing pressure and public protests demanding his resignation after his administration failed to send alerts to citizens hours after the floods began on October 29.
In Spain, regional governments are responsible for civil protection and can request additional resources from the national government in Madrid, led by the Socialist Party.
Mr Mazón was alongside members of the Spanish royal family and socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez when they were pelted with mud by enraged locals during their first visit to a devastated area of the Valencia region earlier this month .
Mardi, King Felipe VI once again visited the soldiers of the province who took part in the clean-up operations and said he and his wife, Queen Letizia, would visit the earthquake-hit towns again in mid-November.
In a interview exclusive Granted to euronews this Tuesday, Spanish Finance Minister Carlos Cuerpo said the country would “everything you need” to help flood victims, but that it was too early to start naming culprits.
The central government has so far allocated at least 14 billion euros in aid and the reconstruction of the Valencia region.
Speaking this week at the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, Spanish Prime Minister Sanchez said Valencia's deadly floods were a wake-up call for the world regarding climate change.
“This is not an isolated event, climate change kills. We must act”he recalled during the conference.
The storm system known as DANA occurs when cold polar air moves over the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea. This phenomenon would be more and more frequent and more and more serious due to climate change.
According to a partial analysis published earlier this month by World Weather Attribution, a network of international scientists, Human-caused climate change has doubled the likelihood of a storm like the recent deluge that hit Valencia.
