Spain declares three days of official mourning for the victims of the devastating ‘gota fría’

The Spanish Government has decreed that the nation will observe three days of official mourning in memory of those who have lost their lives in the devastating storms which struck parts of the Comundad Valenciana and Castilla-La Mancha on Tuesday and have declared the area most affected by one of the worst ‘gota frías’ in living memory as a disaster zone.

Many events scheduled to have taken place between Thursday 31st October and Saturday 2nd November have been suspended as a mark of respect to the victims. The FFCV also confirmed that all football matches scheduled to take place over the weekend have been suspended.

In Xàbia, the Mercatap gastronomic event in the indoor market on the evening of Thursday 31st and the Oktoberfest Xàbia festival that was due to take place over the weekend in Placeta del Convent have both been cancelled.

After months of drought, the meteorological phenomenon caused by the passage of a DANA (an isolated depression at high levels) across the Iberian peninsula produced one of the most devastating and tragic storms to have hit the Comunidad Valenciana in a century. The torrential rains and high winds brought great chaos across a huge swathe of the territory, causing devastating flooding which tore through towns and villages, sweeping up vehicles in its waters, and even tearing down a bridge across the river at Picanya, just south of the city of Valencia.

The rainfall accumulations were record-breaking. A weather station in the town of Chiva, located some 30km inland from Valencia, recorded 435 litres/sqm, whilst a station in Forata, a few kilometres to the south-west of Chiva, collected 242 litres/sqm. Carlet, about an hour’s drive north of Xàbia, not only recorded 192 litres/sqm but also suffered the devastation of a tornado which ripped through its industrial zone. By contrast, the weather station located in the Fontanella zone of Xàbia recorded just 12.8 litres/sqm during Tuesday. As for the wind, a weather station in Bunyol recorded a gust of 143 km/h.

Whilst material damage has been described as “very considerable”, the Minister for Territorial Politics, Ángel Víctor Torres has said that the greatest damage has been the loss of life and, at the time of writing, over 90 people have been confirmed as victims of the storms whilst many more remain unaccounted for and even the most optimistic forecasts suggest that the toll could exceed 100.

He confirmed that more than 1,100 UME (Military Emergency Unit) members have been deployed to the Valencian region to join the 200 members of the Army, 750 officers from the Guardia Civil and 1,700 officers from the Policía Nacional in assisting local police and Protección Civil volunteers in rescue tasks. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von de Leyen, also confirmed that the Copernicus satellite system had been activated to assist the rescue teams.

Some 24 hours after the phenomenon, many villages in the Province of Valencia remained cut-off and some 155,000 people were without electricity. Parts of the A-3 and A-7 motorways remain closed whilst more than 60 secondary roads have been flooded and the President of the Generalitat Valenciana, Carlos Mazón, has announced that all unnecessary journeys in the affected areas should be avoided to allow the emergency services to circulate as freely as possible. In addition, the Minister for Transport, Óscar Puente, confirmed that “significant damage” caused by the storm has forced the AVE service between Madrid and Valencia to be suspended for several days.

The declaration of the area as being “highly affected by a natural phenomenon” will allow it to be able to request aid to assist with its recovery and Torres has indicated that “all the necessary resources” will be activated by both the Spanish Government and the European Union to start the reconstruction of those areas most affected by the storms, although he admitted that it will not be easy.