On the ground, the sun returned on Thursday, 48 hours after the tragedy, producing a striking contrast with the spectacle of desolation offered by all the localities in the area.
In Paiporta, a martyr town of 25,000 inhabitants in the southern suburbs of Valencia, at least 62 people died, according to the mayor, Maribel Albalat.
Still stunned, residents tried to clean the streets, covered in viscous mud, in an end-of-the-world setting. “There is no longer a business standing”said David Romero, a 27-year-old musician.
Red alert lifted in Castellón
Visiting Valencia, capital of the eponymous region, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez assured that the episode of bad weather was not “not finished” and called on the inhabitants of this region to “stay at home” and to “don’t go out”.
He was referring to a “red alert” (maximum alert level synonymous with extreme risk) launched Thursday morning by the National Meteorological Agency (Aemet) for certain areas of the province of Castellón, located just north of that of Valencia , where heavy rains fell. However, the alert was lifted in the afternoon, moving to orange, which reflects a reduction in the danger.
Mr. Torres also announced that the central government had agreed to make available to the regional government “all the resources of the army” to open roads and reach “in every corner” of the affected area, which suggests that some villages are still cut off from the world.
He also indicated that 39 people had been arrested and that “in the face of looting and crimes”the security forces would demonstrate “absolute firmness”.
More than 1,200 soldiers are already deployed on the ground, mainly in the Valencia region, alongside firefighters, police and rescue workers. According to authorities, thousands of people are still without electricity in the region.
Nightmare night
“I never thought I would experience this”confided Eliu Sánchez, resident of Sedavi, a town of 10,000 inhabitants in the suburbs of Valencia, recounting a nightmarish night.
“We saw a young man in a vacant lot taking refuge on the roof of his car”said this 32-year-old electrician. “He tried to jump” on another vehicle, but the current “took him away”.
High-speed trains between Madrid and Valencia, suspended since Wednesday, will remain so at least for “two to three weeks”indicated the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente.
A year of precipitation
According to Aemet, more than 300 liters of water per square meter (or 30 cm) fell during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday in several towns in the Valencia region, with a peak at 491 liters/m2 (49.1 cm) in the small village of Chiva. It is the equivalent “from a year of precipitation”she clarified.
The Valencia region and the Spanish Mediterranean coast in general regularly experience, in autumn, the phenomenon known as “gota fria” (“cold drop”), an isolated depression at high altitude which causes sudden and extremely violent rains, sometimes for several days.
But the phenomenon had never reached such magnitude. “The worst cold drop of the century”was the headline on the front page of the daily El País.
In a first analysis, scientists from World Weather Attribution, a reference network that studies the link between extreme weather phenomena and climate change, estimated Thursday that “climate change is the most likely explanation” to the violence of bad weather in Spain.
According to this analysis, the torrential rains that hit Spain were 12% heavier and twice as likely as if the climate had not warmed.
