Spain evacuated thousands of residents and closed schools on Wednesday as torrential rains battered the country, just two weeks after the deadliest floods in a generation claimed more than 220 lives.
The national weather office, AEMET, issued a red alert – the highest level – for the southern province of Malaga and the northeastern Catalonia region, warning of heavy rains expected to last until Friday.
Forecasters predict up to 180 millimeters of rain could fall in just 12 hours, while the eastern Valencia region, already devastated by earlier floods, experienced less severe downpours.
Emergency services in the southern Andalusia region said more than 1,000 homes and nearly 3,000 residents had been evacuated in and around the city of Malaga.
Footage on social media showed Malaga’s normally bustling commercial center deserted and cars navigating rising water that had submerged roads.
Ester Espinosa, a 47-year-old resident of Malaga’s Campanillas suburb, told AFP that residents were erecting a barricade to fend off the water.
“It hasn’t been exaggerated at all,” added Ida Maria Ledesma Martin, a 39-year-old social educator who said police had warned residents that morning.
The high-speed line connecting Madrid and Malaga, as well as regional services, were suspended, national railway operator Renfe said, while the local metro was shut.
Malaga airport canceled one flight and diverted five others, operator Aena wrote on X. Local television images showed its entrance had been flooded.
The start of the Billie Jean King Cup tennis finals between Spain and Poland in Malaga was also postponed.
“Today, Malaga is paralyzed... If there is intense rain in a short period of time, there are no capacities or infrastructure that can cope,” Andalusia region leader Juanma Moreno told reporters.
The rain led to school and university closures across large parts of Valencia, Andalusia, and Catalonia.
Officials in the Valencia region have warned that sewage systems already clogged with mud could struggle to cope with another storm.
The October 29 catastrophe killed 223 people, mostly in the Valencia region, wrecked infrastructure, gutted buildings, and submerged fields. The final cost is expected to soar into the tens of billions of euros.
“There’s nothing to lose now,” Carlos Molto, a resident of the Picanya suburb of Valencia city, told local television station A Punt.
Many people in the destroyed town of Paiporta had barricaded their homes with planks or sandbags to try to protect them from further flooding, an AFP journalist observed.
The regional governments of Andalusia and Catalonia sent emergency alerts to mobile phones, warning people to be cautious after many residents in Valencia two weeks ago received them too late.
“Prevention is better than cure, we have already seen it in Valencia,” Moreno said.
Both storms are the result of a sudden cold drop, known in Spanish as a gota fria. When cold air moves over the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea, it allows the hotter, moist air at the surface to rise quickly, producing intense rain clouds.
