Thousands of people have been evacuated as parts of Spain are lashed with rain, just weeks after flash flooding caused the country’s worst natural disaster in living memory.
Red weather alerts were issued on Wednesday evening in Valencia as more torrential rain hit areas already devastated by the previous flooding that left more than 220 people dead, with as much as 110mm of rain falling overnight in some locations.
In Malaga, residents in the village of Benamargosa described houses and businesses being “decimated” on Wednesday after the river running through the centre of the village burst its banks.
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Around 3,000 people living along the Guadalhorce River and reportedly a further 1,100 near the Vélez River were evacuated, while the city’s main hospital was forced to limit services to emergencies after it was flooded.
While those red alerts were downgraded on Thursday morning, severe rain warnings remained in force across swathes of the country.
On the east coast, Valencia remains subject to a yellow alert, in force until midnight, with up to 60mm of rain forecast in the space of 12 hours. Dozens of emergency callouts were reported overnight, mostly in areas worst-hit by the previous floods, which killed more than 200 people.
“It was a tricky night because it didn’t stop raining … we had never seen so much rain,” the mayor of Cullera, Jordi Mayor, told public broadcaster TVE. “Practically all the streets” were submerged, flooding the civil protection headquarters and leading to a major clean-up effort, he said.
In the west, orange alerts are in force in Huelva, Andévalo and Condado, Aracena, Seville, Cadiz, Narrow and Grazalema, with warnings of up to 80mm of rainfall in one hour.
The city council in Huelva has activated its emergency plan, under which all public parks, municipal buildings and sports facilities will be closed, while municipal workers who can do so are told to work remotely, Spanish news agency EFE reported.
Lesser yellow warnings are also in force further north in Avila, southern Salamanca and northern Caceres, as well as along the coastlines of Granada and Almeria, and inland at Murcia, Alcaraz and Segura.
The northwest coastline, above Portugal, is also subject to alerts over gale-force winds.
The latest rains come as clean-up efforts continue following the deadly flash floods that struck last month, destroying thousands of homes and washing away bridges, cars and other debris.
Spain’s Consortium for Insurance Compensation has reported receiving 116,000 insurance claims for flood damage, 30 per cent of which are for homes, and has estimated that it will spend at least €3.5bn in compensation payouts.