Why Spain’s floods were so deadly

For Carlos Mazón, Tuesday — the day of the flood — was a fairly light day by the standards of the president of Spain’s fourth-largest region.

After kicking off the day by receiving a certificate for his region’s achievements in sustainable tourism, the Valencian leader launched a new online healthcare assistant powered by artificial intelligence and held budget talks with business groups.

As the president attended these events, throughout Tuesday — and for several days preceding — Spain’s national weather service was sending his regional government increasingly urgent warnings that a flood of catastrophic proportions was approaching. While Mazón was posing for pictures, officials from emergency services and crisis management agencies were huddled in meeting rooms. Heavy rains were already causing rivers to overflow.

The Valencian government’s apparently slow reaction to the unfolding catastrophe is now under scrutiny. In an interview with POLITICO on Wednesday, an official from Spain’s national government questioned why Mazón’s administration, which has the statutory responsibility to lead crisis management in the region, had waited until 8 p.m. on Tuesday night to issue text alerts to people, many of whom were caught unaware by the rushing water.

As of Thursday evening, at least 155 deaths were confirmed in Valencia, but authorities say the toll could climb higher as floodwaters recede.

Chronicle of a flood foretold

On Friday, Oct. 25, Spain’s government meteorologists started warning of a potentially historic rainstorm. AEMET, the country’s meteorological agency, issued an information note that the combination of a low-pressure system and easterly winds carrying humid air from the Mediterranean toward the Spanish coast would bring heavy rains, “most likely on Tuesday 29,” though they weren’t sure yet where exactly it would fall. 

Throughout the weekend, AEMET’s warnings became increasingly accurate and more urgent, pinpointing Valencia and predicting the rain would begin Monday, followed by up to three months’ worth of rain in a single day on Tuesday.

By Monday, the agency issued an “orange” weather warning for several regions, including Valencia. That afternoon, AEMET sent another bulletin. On its social media, the agency warned of “significant danger.”

The local government was well aware. At lunchtime Monday, the Valencian interior ministry issued a press release warning of an extreme rainstorm and likely floods, asking the region’s municipalities to stay on alert and activate preventative measures. 

At 8:45 p.m., the University of Valencia declared an emergency and suspended classes. 

Despite these warning signs, on Tuesday — the day of the floods — Mazón decided to carry on with his schedule. Even as the situation worsened, he attended every event listed on the official schedule sent out by the regional government at 7 a.m.

On Tuesday morning, AEMET upgraded its warning level to “maximum red” for Valencia. By 8 a.m., the agency sent out another alert warning of “extreme” danger, with more than 90 millimeters of rain forecast to fall within a single hour. Locals were urged to stay indoors and avoid unnecessary travel. Within the hour, the national agency’s regional branch shared footage of flooded Valencian municipalities. 

At 9:30 a.m., the national government’s representative in Valencia, Pilar Bernabé, met with members of the regional government, emergency services, transport authorities and the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation (CHJ) — an independent agency charged with managing the Júcar river basin — to discuss the floods, according to social media posts.

By mid-morning, with the disaster unfolding, the Valencian government’s president posed for photos as he accepted a sustainable tourism certificate. 

Before noon, the CHJ posted footage of overflowing rivers. It would be another eight hours before authorities sent an emergency alert to residents’ phones.

Mazón continued with his appointments as usual. At lunchtime, he presented a digital health strategy. It was clear by then that he had been briefed on the concerns, as he made a statement on the floods at a press conference at 1 p.m. 

But instead of repeating the urgent warnings from meteorological agencies, the president downplayed the severity of the situation.

“According to the forecast … it is expected that around 6 p.m. its intensity will decrease” in the Valencia region, he said, possibly referring to AEMET’s “red” warning, which at the time was in force until 6 p.m. that day. 

“Fortunately,” he added, the storm had so far passed “without any material damage, without any hydrological alert, and everyone is very vigilant.” He appeared to later delete a social media post with the press conference footage. 

While the warnings of heavy rainfall had been coming for days, it is not clear what Mazón was told — and when — about how bad the floods might become.

In the mid-afternoon, Mazón met with local business and trade union leaders to discuss the region’s budget. By then, the water in some municipalities was close to reaching the upper floors of houses, according to footage shared by his government’s emergency coordination unit. 

At 3:29 p.m., the coordination unit said it had requested help from the Spanish military. The photos of Mazón’s budget meeting were posted on the Valencian government’s X account at 4:13 p.m. A spokesperson for Mazón said he spent the afternoon monitoring the floods with the emergency coordination unit.

It wasn’t until 5 p.m. that the government convened its dedicated coordination center, known as CECOPI. When the emergency alert hit people’s phones at 8:12 p.m., with little information other than to stay put, many people were already trapped. 

“They raised the alarm when the water was already here, there’s no need to tell me the flood is coming,” Julian Ormeno, a 66-year-old pensioner, told Agence France-Presse. 

When Mazón appeared before cameras shortly after midnight, his main message to his flood-stricken region was to beware of misinformation. Two hours later, in another press conference, the extent of the disaster appeared to have hit home. 

“Unfortunately, lifeless bodies have already been found,” he said. On Thursday he defended his response to the disaster, saying that warnings were issued at the “appropriate time.” 

“What is clear is that scientific predictions were already warning that something very big could happen,” said Juan Jesús González Alemán, the senior AEMET meteorologist who first warned of the storm’s magnitude last week. 

Political reckoning

With the country in official mourning, many Spanish politicians refrained Thursday from pointing fingers at the regional leader as he helped coordinate the grim recovery. 

But questions were still mounting over both Mazón’s decision-making and the country’s general preparedness for extreme floods, which are predicted to grow more frequent with climate change. 

Indeed, on Thursday, researchers from the World Weather Attribution service said the climate’s current warming level had increased the rainfall by 12 percent and made the storm twice as likely.

On a visit to Valencia, center-right opposition leader Alberto Núñez-Feijóo defended Mazón’s handling of the crisis and appeared to blame AEMET for the delayed response.

“Organizations that are the sole responsibility of the central government — such as the AEMET — provide the information with which the Valencian government formulated its emergency response to the catastrophe,” he said.

Spain’s environment state secretary, Hugo Móran, told newswire EFE that AEMET’s prediction system had worked “perfectly,” with meteorologists “able to predict what is going to happen days in advance.”

But, he added, “the subsequent response mechanisms have not adequately incorporated these warnings.”  

On Thursday, 20 civil society organizations and trade unions called for a Nov. 9 protest against the Valencian government’s crisis management.

The motto: “Mazón, resign.”