Tens Of 1,000s Of Wrecked Cars In Auto Graveyards; Oranges Rotting On The Trees; Welcome To Post-Flood Valencia

The warm Valencia air, still thick with dust and carrying a residual note of mud and damp concrete, begins to reek on the approach to the roadside dump where diggers toil, gulls scavenge and the detritus of countless everyday lives rises in mounds. Almost two months on, the legacy of the worst natural disaster to hit Spain this century is equally evident in the oranges rotting on the trees, in the tens of thousands of cars stacked in makeshift graveyards, and in the fatigue of all those who still queue daily for food, nappies and toilet roll. On 29 October, the eastern Spanish region was pummelled by rains so heavy that a year’s worth of water fell in some areas over the space of just eight hours. The rains brought floods that swept through towns and villages, drowning people in their houses, garages and cars and carrying others off to more distant deaths.

Two hundred and twenty-three people were killed in Valencia, seven in the neighbouring region of Castilla-La Mancha and one farther south in Andalucía. Three people are still missing. After three days of national mourning had been declared and mention made of the need for unity, solidarity and rebuilding, the inevitable political blame game began and, bit by bit, international interest started to wane amid the re-election of Donald Trump and the conflagrations in the Middle East. But while the mud and cars and debris may have been cleared from the streets over the past few weeks – much of it by an army of volunteers from all over Spain – life for those in some of the hardest-hit areas remains in disarray.

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Only two of Paiporta’s six schools have reopened and many people are still unable to get into their garages because of the mud and water. Reminders of what happened, she adds, are never far away: last week, a clearance worker came across the body of a Moroccan man who had lived in a shack near the metro station and who had been missing since 29 October. The discovery of his remains brought the death toll in the town to 46. “We feel a bit abandoned – not by our fellow citizens, but by the authorities,” says Mota. “We’re all still in survival mode here, queueing for food and I don’t think that the psychological reality of all this has hit yet, but it will. The politicians are still arguing about whose fault it was but we’re still here and we still need help.”

Many people in Valencia and beyond cannot fathom why, despite several meteorological warnings, the regional government did not send an emergency alert to people’s mobiles until after 8pm on the day of the floods. Nor do they understand how the regional president, Carlos Mazón, could find time for a three-hour lunch with a journalist that day when parts of his region were under 3 metres of waters and the unprecedented scale of the disaster was patently obvious.

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/21/spain-valencia-paiporta-picanya-anger-floods