People in flood-hit Spain stacked sandbags and braced for new storms on Tuesday as the political repercussions from last month’s deadly climate disaster rumbled on.
Amid fresh weather warnings, local media reported that King Felipe VI would soon return to the site of the flash floods, after he was pelted with mud and eggs on his first visit last week owing to local fury at the poor preparation and response of the authorities.
More than 100,000 protesters took to the streets at the weekend and there have also been calls for the resignations of rightwing local government leaders, who ignored warnings and blocked measures to address the growing risks posed by human-caused climate disruption. A further protest was held in Barcelona on Tuesday.
Eight Spanish areas were once again put on alert on Tuesday for heavy rain, high waves, and strong winds in the Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencia, just two weeks after the downpours that killed at least 214 people.
The storm is not expected to be as powerful but the impact of the rain could be severe because of the quantities of mud already on the ground and the condition of the sewage system, Rosa Tauris, a spokesperson for Valencia’s emergency committee, told reporters.
In many areas, thousands of children had only just returned to school on Monday, and road clearance and rebuilding work is still under way with support from thousands of military personnel.
A year’s worth of rain lashed down in less than eight hours on 29 October, devastating infrastructure, wrecking crops and causing damage expected to rise to tens of billions of euros.
In what is an increasingly familiar pattern worldwide, scientists had long warned that storms would grow in intensity and frequency as a result of human burning of gas, oil, coal and trees; meteorologists issued alerts in the hours and days before the deluge; and politicians failed to act with sufficient urgency, leading to a furious public backlash.
Protesters have called for the resignation of the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the Valencia region’s conservative leader, Carlos Mazon, accusing them of negligence and murder because public alerts came too late.
Sánchez has acknowledged the need for a political reckoning once the danger has passed and the clean-up work is completed. “Later will come the political debate about what things we must improve in the face of this climate emergency,” he said on Monday as his government passed a second emergency relief package worth almost €3.8bn (£3.15bn).
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Such scenes are likely to become more common across the world. The UN recently warned that global average temperature rise was approaching 1.5C above preindustrial levels, which would put the world on course for a catastrophic rise of 2.6-3.1C this century, unless there are immediate and big cuts to greenhouse gas emissions. “A failure to act will lead to increasingly frequent and dangerous extreme weather events,” said the world body.
At the opening of Cop29 in Baku on Monday, this message was underscored by the UN climate summit’s president, Mukhtar Babayev, who said the recent disasters in Valencia and elsewhere showed climate breakdown was already here. “We are on a road to ruin,” the former oil executive said in his address. “People are suffering in the shadows; they are dying in the dark.”
Jim Skea, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told the conference that disasters would become commonplace without urgent action to cut emissions. “This is the new normal. Imagine what is in store in the coming decades, if we do not act swiftly and decisively. With every fraction of a degree of global warming, we face greater threats,” he said.
Pope Francis underscored the link during an address in the Vatican at the weekend when he expressed hope that Cop29 would make “an effective contribution to our common home”, followed immediately by his wish for people to pray for the residents of Valencia.