The Spanish Royals were assaulted by the angry population as they visited the flooded areas in Valencia, Spain, yesterday. In the same circumstances, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was hit with a wooden stick. The people’s rage is motivated by the absence of government help before, during and after the flood, which had been forecast by meteorologists. Over 200 people are dead but the number might rise dramatically as some 1,900 are missing.
A large number of floods have been recorded in Valencia, from 1321 to 1897. Up to 75 floods are estimated to have taken place in the seven centuries prior to the 1957 flood. The last has been remembered as the “Gran Riada De Valencia,” and caused 81 deaths (but some say there were many more victims).
After the 1957 flood, authorities decided to divert the Turia River, so that it would no longer constitute a threat for the city of Valencia. A new river bed was built south of the city, which has been protected from floods, until... The European Union issued the Water Framework Directive in 2000, aimed at restoring animal-friendly conditions in wetlands.
A 2019 report by Wetlands International and the Italian Center for River Restoration (CIRF) on the state of implementation of the directive in eight cases which were studied, in Spain, France, Belgium and the U.K., states that intervention on the Turia River has successfully increased the flow of the Turia.
Interventions focused on the Benageber Dam, which was built in 1950 and “significantly altered the hydrological regime of the Turia River downstream. The low flow rates resulted in consequent stress of water temperature—up to 24°C in summer. This condition affected the ecological integrity of the riverine communities and caused the almost total disappearance of the brown trout (Salmo trutta) throughout the water body.
“The project focused on the increase of the minimum environmental flow below the dam. The effort aimed to improve one of the four aspects of environmental flows (following Spanish regulation) in the River Basin Management Plan with the overall objective to contribute to improvement of the ecological status of the water body.
