The Rain in Spain

As yet another region in Spain starts the post-flood clearing up while bracing itself for another deluge, it is, perhaps, worth considering this:

The European dam removal movement achieved another record-breaking year. A remarkable 487 barriers were removed in 15 European countries in 2023 – a 50% increase on last year’s record number […] 

Spain, which had been crowned the trailblazer of barrier removal in Europe for two years in a row, was dethroned by France and now occupies second place. 

Environmentalists and fact-checkers have been quick to point out in the past couple of weeks that most of the ‘dams’ were weirs and irrigation culverts and that the amount of recent rainfall in eastern Spain was unusually large (which allowed them a happy detour into Climate Change) so the work did not cause the flooding. That may be strictly true, but removing several hundred dams, weirs and barriers in the interests of ‘biodiversity and fish migration’ can hardly have helped.

Although words like ‘unprecedented’ are cropping up in the news coverage, Spain is no stranger to catastrophic floods; the meteorological phenomenon which caused the heavy rainfall is familiar to the Spanish - so much so that they are the source of the acronym for it: DANA (Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos). Research has identified five separate flood-rich periods of several decades in the Iberian peninsula since the beginning of sixteenth century, while the success of a Roman dam in protecting a town in Aragon shows that, nearly two millennia ago, their engineers planned with an informed eye to the possibility of serious flooding. 

I’m not going to dwell on the horror and tragedy of what happened to the victims, but it is clear that the abundance of cars and lorries in a modern city has added a disturbing dimension to the dangers of a river bursting its banks in a built-up area; it looks as if much of the worst damage and loss of life was caused by water-borne debris, including vehicles, crashing into buildings or blocking the flow under low bridges and forcing water at speed into the gridlocked neighbouring streets.

Although It would be extremely difficult to prepare fully for the weather Spain has experienced, I do wonder whether, in a country prone to episodes of extreme rainfall and given the increasing potential risk to life, it might have been wise to employ at least some of the available expertise, machinery and manpower in developing more upstream water holding areas and creating overflow capacity and relief channels to protect the densely populated parts of the country below.

Sadly, the Dam Removal Europe website gives the distinct impression that, although they briefly congratulate themselves on reducing the number of swimmers and kayakers drowning in weirs and preventing the potential catastrophic collapse of decaying obsolete hydro-electric dams from the last century, humans may not be their main priority.

Dam Removal Europe is a movement of river enthusiasts, volunteers, activists, river practitioners, biologists, environmental agencies, and other actors related to water management and freshwater ecosystem restoration. […] the motor of this movement is a coalition united by one common goal: restoring free-flowing rivers.

In the light of the recent news stories, I’m not sure that’s always a good thing.