Andorra, the tax haven that couldn't escape Spain's deadly floods

Andorra's flash flood raises questions about its urban planning model

What good is a country with tax advantages if a flash flood sends mud sweeping down its avenues and its buildings look like they belong on the outskirts of a city? It's an uncomfortable question now running through economic discussions after the images of the DANA (severe flooding) in Andorra.

The Pyrenean microstate sells the image of a haven for millionaires and content creators. But the controversy ignited by the water and mud points to another reality: apartment blocks of questionable quality, compared by more than one person to Bellvitge, and urban planning that never seems to ask whether dry riverbeds might carry water again.

Not everything is black and white. Alongside the video of the mud, some point out that urban drainage systems are not designed for extraordinary flows. Nor is it easy to dig underground car parks into solid rock. Valencia suffered a DANA and nobody called it a third-world country.

The deeper problem is not the flood, but who lives there and how. The apartments now selling for several million euros were for years home to shop workers in conditions any European standard would consider inhumane. Now, with the arrival of new residents drawn by the tax advantages, the precariousness is dressed up with generous tax breaks.

Between the idyllic postcard and the joke that it works like North Korea disguised as Monaco, one certainty remains: mud knows nothing about tax rates. When the flood arrives, everyone lives in the same country.