How conspiracy theories about Valencia’s deadly floods spread online

Weeks after flash flooding in Spain’s southeastern regions claimed at least 224 lives, misinformation about the causes of the torrential rain continues to run rampant on social media platforms.

Spanish independent fact-checking platform maldita.es has identified a total of 102 disinformation narratives circulating about the tragedy. 

They include a range of conspiracies that the extreme weather was artificially provoked, despite scientific evidence overwhelmingly pointing to a natural phenomenon. 

A report published by the Spanish meteorological agency (AEMET) four days before the floods warns of the formation of the storm and the probability of intense rainfall in the Mediterranean. On the same day, an AEMET researcher warned that the storm had the potential to be in the highest alert category.

However, social media users have been peddling these alternative theories to explain how a year’s worth of rain fell in one day in some areas in the region of Valencia. 

Users falsely claim ‘floods were engineered’

Among the most widespread false narratives is the alleged use of climate engineering, also known as geoengineering.

A widely shared social media video claims to show a vessel spotted off the Valencian coast on the day of the tragedy, which is alleged to have artificially altered the weather with high-frequency transmitters, causing excessive rainfall.

One Instagram post reads: “Everything makes sense, a ship full of antennas as a power plant. What happened in Valencia was climate manipulation. (…) It was located near the catastrophe in Valencia.”

The vessel is also falsely associated with the Alaska-based HAARP programme which studies the outermost part of the Earth’s atmosphere, the ionosphere.

The HAARP program has no capacity to influence or interfere with the weather, yet it has been consistently targeted by conspiracy theorists who have spread unfounded claims that it manipulates natural disasters such as hurricanes.

The Euroverify team detected the video replicated in at least six European languages.

The ship in question in these videos is in fact a floating power plant called the Karadeniz Powership Osman Khan, owned by Turkish firm Karpowership. We traced the original footage back to this promotional video published by the company in 2017. 

News agency AFP verified the ship’s position and found that it has been stationed near the coast of Ghana since 2019. There is no evidence that it was seen near Valencia.

Despite the falsity of these claims, forms of geoengineering are used by over 50 states worldwide — including France, Greece and Spain — to alter the weather. Among the most common techniques is the use of silver iodide to stimulate rain production and tackle drought, also known as ‘cloud seeding’.

But the efficiency of such techniques is questioned. Cloud seeding is estimated to boost rainfall by just 20% in a best-case scenario, according to AEMET.

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Other social media users have falsely claimed that neighbouring Morocco orchestrated the extreme weather conditions to destroy Spanish agricultural harvests.

No, these dams were not removed

Another false claim, believed to have originated from an X post dated 31 October, is that several dams were removed in the affected area, preventing the drainage of water.

Reuters’ fact-checking team traced the map used in the post above to the EU-funded AMBER project website, which documents barriers in European rivers. The blue dots on the map represent weirs — small river barriers that raise water levels and divert water flow.

The latest official data from the Spanish government shows that only five small weirs or dams were removed in the Valencian region between 2000 and 2021.

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An inventory provided by the NGO Dam Removal Europe confirms that only five weirs were removed in the affected region through 2023.

Local authorities assure that those removed weirs are often damaged and out of use, and and incapable of storing excess water.