Violent storms in Spain: At least three dead

At least three people have died in violent storms in Spain. At least one other person was missing. Especially over the tourist metropolis of Barcelona and neighboring regions in the north, more than 200 liters of rain per square meter was measured in places on Saturday and Sunday night, as Catalonia's regional weather service, Meteocat, announced on the X platform. Numerous streets, basements and ground floors were flooded, trees were uprooted and rivers overflowed their banks.

In the town of Tordera, about 65 kilometers northeast of Barcelona, ​​a man died when a wall collapsed on him, mayor Elisabet Magias told Canal 24 on Sunday. According to the fire department, another person died in the town of Montornès de Vallès and a search is underway for a missing person in the Pineda de Mar region. A 102-year-old woman drowned in her home in the town of Madrigueras in the Castile-La Mancha region on Saturday. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez expressed his condolences to the relatives.

However, Catalonia in northeastern Spain was hit particularly hard. Images from the town of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, which borders Barcelona, ​​showed flooded streets and people wading through knee-deep water in their homes.

The Catalan fire department said it received more than a thousand calls in the region on Sunday night. Most of the incidents involved full cellars, flooded apartments or fallen trees. Firefighters also had to rescue several people from their vehicles who had been trapped by the water. Authorities also reported flooding and flooded roads in the Basque Country as a result of heavy rain.

Weather experts have been warning for some time that man-made climate change is making violent storms more likely. In particular, the increasingly heated Mediterranean Sea, where water temperatures of 33 degrees were measured last summer, is increasing the risk of extreme rainfall on land, according to the Spanish national weather service Aemet. The higher the water temperature, the more water evaporates. As a result, large and extremely humid air masses form over the heated sea. If they meet a cold front, extreme rainfall occurs.