Mud, loss, and resilience: Amid COP29, the Valencia flood disaster serves as a reminder of the devastating impact of climate change and government inaction

Mud coats everything, from the ground to the lower floors of buildings. Facades are marked by a dark line, a witness to the flood's destructive power. The air is heavy with the smell of chemicals and decay that impregnates the clothes of everyone present. Cars, covered in mud and debris, are piled up forming an uneven wall of wreckage that blocks the streets, some marked with sombre spray-painted letters, indicating whether they were found empty or cleared of human remains.

Chaos took over after torrential rains in Spain's eastern region of Valencia triggered devastating floods, resulting in one of Europe's deadliest flash floods in recent decades.

The Poyo ravine, usually dry, overflowed, inundating the towns of Paiporta, Chiva, Torrent, Picanya, Benetúser, Alfafar, Catarroja and several others, leaving 214 dead, 78 missing and affecting over 36,000 people so far, according to the Ministry of Interior.

“It was horrible, absolutely horrible,” says Mapi del Coso, a 45-year-old teacher at Paiporta’s Ausiàs March public infant school, with around 650 students — the town with the highest number of dead.

“It wasn’t raining here, I finished class at 4 PM and no one told us anything, we were working as usual,” Mapi adds. 

The teacher says she stayed with her nine-year-old daughter in the school until around 6 PM for her extracurricular activities while her oldest daughter, 12 years old, went home alone. Suddenly, the ravine overflowed, and water rushed down towards the town.

“I desperately tried to get home through different entries but couldn’t. We could see a huge water wave coming, so I fled to Valencia with my smallest daughter,” the teacher recalls.

Mapi's husband was caught in the floodwaters on his way home from work and had to abandon his car, seeking refuge on a bridge until 4 AM.

“Meanwhile, my oldest daughter was home alone and had to go through it all by herself. We were video calling the whole time and you could see how desperate and afraid she was, witnessing everything from the balcony. Thank God we live on the third floor, but she was still afraid the water would reach her. She could see the cars floating away. She’s just a kid.”

According to the teacher, inside the building, the floodwaters filled the entire ground-floor parking lot and nearly reached the ceiling of the first floor. Outside, on the streets, the water level rose to approximately 1.60 or 1.70 metres.

“So far, we’ve been getting help from the volunteers. Neither the municipality nor the military forces have come to help us,” the teacher explains.

“The military arrived two days ago in Paiporta. They’ve taken too long to arrive. All the progress that’s been made is thanks to the volunteers: people who have arrived with machines from Salamanca, Bilbao… Some of them are police officers and military men who have come voluntarily, not because they’ve been deployed.”

Volunteers push through 

As days pass, relief efforts have become more coordinated between volunteers and emergency services such as the police, firefighters, and the army.

More than ten days after the disaster, the weekend brought an even larger surge of volunteers, many of whom were unable to help during the week due to work commitments. The influx of cars is so large that authorities are directing people to park on the outskirts of towns and walk to the affected areas.

Inside a garage, also in Paiporta, where the smell and humidity are overwhelming, mud marks reach the ceiling. Two young men from the southern city of Granada are knee-deep in stagnant water that has been there for over 10 days. The risk of disease is high, so volunteers and workers need to wear boots and protective gear.

“We arrived at dusk,” says Jadín Dien Ortega, a 26-year-old telephone electrician from Granada who came with his close friend right after they finished work.

“We’ve never ever seen anything like this in our lives,” his friend, Francisco Manuel Gómez Zambrano, also 26 and a hairdresser, says.

“This is very hard. We were seeing everything through social media and something inside of us moved, but when you arrive and see it for yourself it's a shock. It looks like a film.”

Both friends loaded a van with necessities — some donated by people in Granada and others bought with their own money — such as disinfectant, tools, cleaning products, food, and toys for children. Due to vehicle restrictions in the affected area, they are currently working as manual labour, waiting for permission from the police to enter with their van.

“They told us we should drop them off [all the necessities] at an emergency ward, but we didn’t like the idea. We’d rather hand them out to the families and people ourselves,” says Francisco, showing little trust for the authorities.

According to the two, the only option they were given other than dropping the stuff off at the pavilion was to carry it with them.

“How on earth are we going to carry a full van just the two of us, walking for forty minutes, with our bare hands?” he questions. 

Blame game

Scepticism for authorities has reached peaked levels among the people in the region. They blame both the local and central government for the lack of response.

When regional governor Carlos Mazón, president Pedro Sánchez and the Spanish King and Queen visited the affected areas last week, their security detail blocked access, preventing volunteers from continuing their work. This angered many locals, who responded by throwing mud and stones. The officials had to be escorted away.

The incident has further fuelled the debate over who is responsible for the poor management of alerts and the emergency response.

On Tuesday, October 29, the Spanish Meteorological Agency (AEMET) and regional emergency services escalated weather alerts for the Valencia region throughout the morning, initially raising the alert to red in the province’s northern interior at 7:37 AM, as heavy rains intensified.

Despite ongoing severe flooding in many areas, it wasn’t until 8:12 PM, hours after the Poyo ravine overflowed that the Generalitat (the local government) issued a mass SMS warning residents to stay indoors. This alert came too late, as by then thousands were already trapped in rising waters, facing the devastating effects of the flood without prior warning to take necessary precautions.

“I want there to be a record of this: no one has done anything. I’m a teacher and no one informs us of anything, the council of education says one thing, public health says a different thing and regarding Paiporta’s municipality… I rather not get started,” Mapi, the teacher, complains angrily.

While Valencian president, Carlos Mazón, blames the central government, arguing that the General Directorate of Civil Protection should have issued mobile alerts in advance, the Ministry of the Interior points out that the management of civil protection plans is the responsibility of the autonomous communities.

Some political parties, military and emergency services point the finger at the Valencian government, others accuse Pedro Sánchez's executive of being responsible for halting a rescue device when the death toll continued to rise as days passed.

So far, the central government has deployed over 8,495 military personnel, including 2,103 from the Military Emergency Unit (UME), and 9,728 law enforcement officers, comprising 4,438 National Police and 5,290 Civil Guard officers.

To support these efforts, a fleet of specialised ground, air, and water vehicles, including helicopters, drones, and boats, from both the military and law enforcement has been mobilised.

“We responded immediately, but it took time to assess the full extent of the needs,” said Javier Marcos, Chief Commander of the UME, in a press conference, where he also added that “of the 72 municipalities affected by the floods, 30 have not sought assistance from the UME.”

“They haven’t offered us any practical solutions. I know this is complicated because this situation has overwhelmed all of us, but the fact that those affected are the ones trying to put a solution to it is…” says the teacher.

“We haven’t received any help from those who were supposed to provide it. You are in a higher position for a reason, not to be laughing around and posing for pictures.”

Public anger 

Ten days after the disaster, a major demonstration in Valencia took place, with around 130,000 attendees chanting for Mazón’s resignation.

A sign held by demonstrators read We are covered in mud, you are covered in blood, expressing their anger towards the authorities. The protests escalated into riots in some areas, with police using force against demonstrators, many of them direct victims of the floods.

According to World Weather Attribution — an international collaboration of scientists who analyse extreme weather events to determine the extent to which climate change has influenced them — over the past 75 years, global warming has doubled the likelihood of extreme rainfall events, increasing their intensity by 12%, in central and southeastern Spain, primarily during the September-December season.  

In September, severe flooding forced tens of thousands to evacuate their homes across Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Romania, when days of heavy rainfall drenched these regions.

Similarly, southern Germany experienced mass evacuations earlier in the summer. Also, earlier this year, the United Arab Emirates and Oman were hit by record-breaking rainfall, Kenya suffered devastating floods and landslides, resulting in numerous fatalities, and, in Brazil, floods affected an area the size of the UK, displacing over half a million people.

The UN's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), states that, as global temperatures rise, the frequency and intensity of heavy downpours are increasing.

A once-in-a-decade rainfall event could become 1.5 times more frequent at a 1.5C temperature rise, which the world is increasingly close to hitting. A recent study published in Water Resources Research suggests that global flooding events could become 49% more frequent over the next 80 years if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated.

The UN Climate Change Conference (COP 29) kicked off this month in Azerbaijan, with delegates from around the world convening in its capital city, Baku, for two weeks of negotiations, dynamic discussions and global collaboration focused on tackling the climate crisis with urgency.

This year’s focus is on carbon emissions and how to finance a transition away from oil and gas, the main drivers provoking a global rise in temperatures.

Yet, as politicians debate, climate change and its human consequences worsen.

In Valencia, civil society's response remains far swifter than any government action. Mapi now volunteers eight hours a day at her former school, which has been transformed into a logistics centre. It now operates as a supermarket and fruit shop and distributes up to 5,000 warm meals daily to anyone in need, including neighbours and volunteers.

“I am a teacher and I want to go back to my job,” she says. “[But] I will continue to help as long as it is necessary.”

Javier Jennings Mozo is an audio-visual freelance journalist based in Cairo who specialises in social issues. He has previously covered the Balkans and Spain

Follow him on X: @javierjenningsm

Okba Mohammad is a Syrian reporter and co-founder of Baynana.es magazine, the first Spanish and Arabic media outlet created by refugee journalists in Spain

Follow him on X: @OkbaMohamad