Madrigueras: 140 litres per m² and a street called Arroyo

Albacete: 79 rescues in a town with a street called Arroyo

The DANA storm leaves in Madrigueras, a municipality in Albacete, 79 rescues, five missing and one 102-year-old woman dead. Residents maintain that an almost identical episode occurred 50 or 60 years ago. For several participants in the debate, the problem was never the rain: it was where construction was allowed from then on.

Around 140 litres per square metre fell in a few minutes, according to the figure cited in the thread. A volume that a drainage network designed for ordinary rain can hardly swallow. And there begins the uncomfortable part: the discussion about whether this is exceptional or a classic of the autumn calendar in the Levante.

Why does Albacete flood if it is a dry plain?

As one participant explains, it is not that dry: Albacete sits on an endorheic plain, water that comes down from the mountains has no natural outlet to the sea and stays in Los Llanos. The city was built, in fact, on swampy terrain and for centuries canals have been dug to drain it, among them the María Cristina canal, dating from the 19th century.

The pattern repeats every time a storm discharges heavily on the mountains. Those who know the area recall floods that swept away riverbanks long before construction took place there. The Valdemembra river, today unrecognisable in the orthophoto, used to overflow violently when its flow swelled. That was not invented by any climate model: it is told by those who heard it as children.

What has changed, according to several participants, is the impermeable surface. Every road, every industrial estate and every home added to the plain takes away a piece of soil that used to absorb. Water that does not filter through goes to the lowest point. And there is the town.

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The street called Arroyo

The most revealing urban detail does not come from a technical report. It comes from zooming in on the map. A participant checks the orthophoto and finds that in the old layout of Madrigueras there is a street literally called Arroyo. The name, he argues, is not folklore: it would be the trace of the watercourse that crossed the centre before asphalt covered it.

In that same orthophoto no obvious watercourse can be seen. Everything is ploughed, built on or turned into street. The town occupies a depression, a hondo, with all the odds stacked against it to receive everything that comes down from above. The practical consequence: when water arrives, it has nowhere to go except through the doors.

Some point to a broader maintenance problem. Ravines and secondary channels have been filling with vegetation due to lack of cleaning, with weeds acting as a plug when it finally rains. The question left hanging is who is supposed to pay that bill.

The clash over climate change: consensus versus "it always peine"

Here the tone rises. Part of the analysis maintains that these floods are lifelong and that attributing them to global warming is a way to sneak in by decree measures that make life more expensive. Torrential autumn rains, they argue, have been typical of this climate for millennia.

The other current does not deny the past: it points to the acceleration and intensity. That it used to rain hard does not imply that now it rains just as hard and with the same frequency, and those defending this position invoke the scientific consensus on the anthropogenic causes of that increase, even if public discussion turns it into a two-sided match.

In between, a local fact that unsettles both sides: the residents of Madrigueras place a comparable episode 50 or 60 years ago. It would not be the first time, but neither an episode without consequences. Both things at once.

Building where water had already built its path

The case of Albacete is not unique. According to a comment in the thread, in the metropolitan area of Valencia there are large shopping centres built in areas already known to flood, and their managers had it documented: the solution was to raise the sales floor. Expensive coastal land, they note, does the rest.

As another participant summarises, the housing bubble left buildings even in the ramblas themselves. Added to the absence of drainage infrastructure, the cocktail was served long before this particular storm arrived. No climate model is needed to explain it: just look at where the bricks were laid.

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The warning is given for the coming days in the centre, south and Mediterranean. The forecast is for strong or very strong storms and, as one participant warns, the scene of cars that nobody moves from the rambla will repeat itself. One thing is to be caught suddenly; another is to see them coming and stay next to the vehicle out of attachment. With what is coming, it is worth deciding in advance whether the car is worth more than the afternoon.