A series of storms which have been battering Spain and Portugal in recent weeks show little sign of letting up, with the weather already having caused fatalities, school closures, infrastructure damage and disruption to transport.
Storm Nils has put areas of both countries on alert due to high winds and flooding.
On Wednesday, a section of Portugal’s main motorway, near the city of Coimbra, collapsed following torrential rainfall when a pillar holding it up gave way after a nearby levee containing the Mondego river burst. Coimbra, a picturesque university town, is located approximately midway between the capital Lisbon in the south and Porto in the north and the damaged A1 motorway connects the two cities.
Police had closed the road beforehand and nobody was hurt, although that section of the motorway is expected to be out of use for several weeks.
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Last Saturday, part of Coimbra’s medieval city wall, which is a Unesco World Heritage Site, had crumbled due to the weather.
Around 3,000 people have been evacuated from the area and are sleeping in shelters. Portugual’s main hostelry association appealed for local hotels and restaurants to lend outdoor heaters to keep evacuees warm.
“Coimbra is going through an extremely difficult time, the rising waters are putting large areas of the city at risk of flooding,” the association said.
At least 15 people have died in the storms, including indirect victims, since they started lashing Portugal in late January.
Authorities are also concerned about rising water in the Tagus river, which runs northward from Lisbon.
Speaking on Thursday, Manuel Jorge Valamatos, head of the civil protection emergency agency in the town of Santarém, which is near the Tagus, said “the next 48 hours are going to be very difficult and require maximum attention, because the rain is going to continue.”
The crisis has already had a political impact, with the interior minister, Maria Lúcia Amaral, resigning over the government’s response to Storm Kristin two weeks ago. That weather phenomenon ripped the roofs off hundreds of homes and left tens of thousands without power in central areas of Portugal.
Prime minister Luís Montenegro said earlier this week that the country was “at the limit of our capacity to contain these waters”.
In Spain, schools and universities were closed and rail travel was disrupted on Thursday across the north-eastern Catalonia region, due to high winds.
At least five people were hospitalised with serious injuries throughout the day, including a workman who was hurt when the roof of a warehouse fell on him.
Ahead of the arrival of Storm Nils, the head of the Catalan weather agency, Sarai Sarroca, had warned that the region could expect “the worst episode of wind of the last 15 to 20 years”.
Prior to that storm’s arrival, the southern region of Andalusia had borne the brunt of the recent extreme weather. Earlier this week, 11,000 people were evacuated from their homes as floodwater poured along streets of towns, causing damage to homes and public buildings. The body of a woman was recovered from the Turvilla river late last week.
Locals in the small town of Huétor Tájar, near the city of Granada, said the recent rainfall had exceeded that of a particularly bad flood in 1963. On Monday, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez, while visiting the town, said that seven storms had hit the country so far this year.
He also underlined “a completely new climatic reality which often supersedes scientific forecasts and which should prompt all levels of government to work to design common public policies”.
The national weather agency has put most of Spain on alert for Friday and Saturday due to expected high winds.
