Spain floods: Málaga evacuates thousands as nation faces fresh storms

Thousands of people in southern Spain have been evacuated from their homes due to a red weather alert for heavy rain and storms, just a fortnight after the nation’s worst flooding in decades claimed at least 220 lives and caused widespread devastation.

Emergency services in the Málaga region — which includes the tourist resorts of Marbella, Velez and Estepona — have moved around 3,000 people from 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.

Spanish meteorological agency AEMET on Tuesday placed nine communities on red or orange weather alerts for strong storms and heavy to torrential rainfall. The warnings cover Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, and parts of the Valencia and Andalusia provinces.

While this latest weather front is not predicted to be as devastating as the one that battered the Valencia region two weeks ago, there are concerns that it could cause further damage and disruption in flood-hit areas.

For example, Valencia’s emergency committee has said the impact of more rain in the area could be severe due to large quantities of mud already on the ground and the poor condition of the sewage system.

Several municipalities in flood-affected regions or those covered by weather alerts have cancelled non-essential events, instructed people to work from home and suspended schooling, and asked volunteers to pause ongoing clean-up operations.

Spanish authorities have been swift to act this time around after the response to the heavy flooding in late October was widely criticised by the public and opposition lawmakers as slow and chaotic.

Valencia’s leader Carlos Mazón is facing growing pressure — and public protests demanding his resignation — after his administration failed to send flood alerts to citizens until hours after the flooding started on 29 Oct.

In Spain, regional governments are charged with handling civil protection and can ask the national government in Madrid, led by the Socialist party, for extra resources.

Mazón was with Spain’s royals and Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez when they were pelted with mud by enraged residents during their first visit to a devastated area in the Valencia region earlier this month.

King Felipe VI on Tuesday visited soldiers in the province who have been helping with the clean-up operation and said that he and his wife, Queen Letizia, will once again visit affected “ground zero” towns in mid-November.

In an exclusive interview with Euronews on Tuesday, Spain’s finance minister Carlos Cuerpo said the country will do “whatever it takes” to help those afflicted by the floods, but that it was too early to start assigning blame.

The central government has so far earmarked at least €14 billion in aid and reconstruction money for the Valencia region.

Speaking this week at the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, Spain’s PM Sánchez said the deadly flooding in Valencia was a wake-up call to the world regarding climate change.

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“It is not an isolated event, climate change kills. We must act,” he told the conference.

The storm system known as DANA occurs when cold polar air moves over the warm water of the Mediterranean Sea. The phenomenon is said to be growing more frequent and severe due to climate change.

Human-caused climate change has doubled the likelihood of a storm such as the recent deluge in Valencia, according to a partial analysis published earlier this month by World Weather Attribution, a network of international scientists.