Spain’s flood nightmare continues as heavy rain hits Barcelona, Valencia tries to dig out

Barcelona, Spain — The recurrent storms in eastern Spain that led to massive flooding last week and killed at least 217 people, almost all of them in the eastern Valencia region, dumped rain further north Monday on Barcelona, prompting authorities to suspend commuter rail services and reroute flights as some highways were inundated.

Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente said he was suspending all commuter trains in northeast Catalonia, a region with 8 million people, at the request of civil protection officials. Cell phones in Barcelona screeched with an alert for “extreme and continued rainfall” on the southern outskirts of the city. The alert urged people to avoid any normally dry gorges or canals.

Puente said the rains had forced air traffic controllers to change the course of 15 flights operating at Barcelona’s airport, located on the southern flank of the city, and the national airport operator later said a total of 50 flights at the hub were cancelled on Monday.

Several highways were closed due to flooding, with images posted on social media showing vehicles along a low-lying section of one artery partially submerted.

Classes were cancelled in Tarragona, a city in southern Catalonia about halfway between Barcelona and Valencia, after a red alert for rains was issued.

Anger boils over at King Felipe in devastated Valencia

Meanwhile, in beleaguered Valencia, the search continued for bodies inside houses, parking garages and thousands of wrecked cars still strewn about the streets, on highways, and in canals that channeled last week’s deluge into populated areas.

Citizens, volunteers and some 10,000 soldiers and police were deployed to help in the gargantuan clean-up effort as residents try to dig their homes and possessions out of a thick layer of mud and debris.

A crowd of angry survivors hurled insults and mud at King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia as they visited the hard-hit Valencia suburb of Paiporta on Sunday.

The crowd shouted “Get out!” and “Killers” among other insults as the monarch and other officials tried to talk to residents, prompting bodyguards to open umbrellas to protect the VIPs as the crowd of several dozen launched mud their way.

Many Valencians have been infuriated by both the government’s response to the disaster and the lack of warnings that such an inundation was coming. Some 3,000 residents in Valencia were still without electricity and internet access was limited on Monday. There have been sporadic reports of looting, too, with at least 20 people arrested from Sunday night into Monday.

Spain’s Mediterranean coast is buffeted by autumn storms that can cause flooding every year, but this year brought the most destructive flash floods in recent memory. 

Scientists link the scale of the disaster to climate change.

Human-caused climate change has doubled the likelihood of storms like last week’s deluge in Valencia, according to a partial analysis issued on Oct. 31 by the World Weather Attribution group, which is made up of dozens of international scientists who study global warming’s role in extreme weather.

Spain had suffered through drought conditions for almost two years, which made the flooding much worse because the parched ground was too hard to absorb the sudden downpour last week.