THE RAIN IN SPAIN

Apart from the fa­mous song ’The Rain in Spain’ from the 1956 hit mu­si­cal ’My Fair Lady’, Spain is a coun­try rarely as­so­ci­ated with rain. That has been par­tic­u­larly true re­cently as parts of the Iber­ian Penin­sula - in­clud­ing Cat­alo­nia - have been sub­ject to a his­toric drought that has lasted three years.

How­ever, all that changed at the end of last month when east­ern and south­ern parts of Spain, the re­gion of Va­len­cia above all, were hit by cat­a­strophic floods that wreaked havoc and have so far claimed the lives of over 200 peo­ple. You can read a sum­mary of what hap­pened on pages 12 and 13 of this mag­a­zine.

Soon after the dis­as­ter hit, for work I got to talk to a cli­mate change ex­pert who pro­vided some in­ter­est­ing con­text for the so-called DANA storm that caused the de­struc­tion. As the rain-laden clouds for these storms are caused by cold air blow­ing over warm Mediter­ranean wa­ters, in­creases in tem­per­a­ture caused by global warm­ing could make these types of episodes more likely, he told me.

The ex­pert was also very crit­i­cal of how the dis­as­ter was han­dled and he sug­gested that the emer­gency re­sponse to the red alert was slow and in­suf­fi­cient, while local peo­ple had not been pre­pared for how to act in such an emer­gency. In the fu­ture, bet­ter fore­cast­ing and plan­ning will be re­quired, he ar­gued, so as to help peo­ple who live in areas vul­ner­a­ble to such episodes, due to the ge­og­ra­phy of the local area, to adapt to the new cli­mate re­al­ity. In other words, it looks like the rain in Spain is here to stay and the best we can do is learn to live with it.

While Va­len­cia was being bat­tered by vi­cious storms, I was in Eng­land vis­it­ing my fam­ily in Liv­er­pool. Con­versely, the UK is a coun­try as­so­ci­ated with bad weather and yet dur­ing the five days I was there it only rained once, briefly, while the tem­per­a­ture seemed fairly warm for late Oc­to­ber and the sun came out at fre­quent in­ter­vals. In a few decades, I won­dered while look­ing at the ter­ri­ble im­ages of Va­len­cia, will my grand­chil­dren be among droves of tourists seek­ing hot and sunny British beaches just to get some respite from the re­lent­less rain in Spain? Un­likely, I de­cided, al­though those of us who live in the Mediter­ranean may have to get used to see­ing a lot more rain that we have been ac­cus­tomed to.

And so it proved. I ar­rived in Barcelona to black skies and a del­uge that made me curse my de­ci­sion five days ago to come to the air­port by mo­tor­bike. I had thought my­self very clever choos­ing the mo­tor­bike over other trans­port op­tions. Park­ing for mo­tor­bikes is free at the air­port and close to the ter­mi­nals. I have two large pan­niers on my bike that my hel­met and boots fit into, and as all I had with me was cabin bag­gage it seemed a no-brainer. What’s more - and here’s the clincher - what were the chances that it would be rain­ing when I got back?

Well, quite high as it turned out, and so I waited for the rain to stop, thereby los­ing the time ad­van­tage gained from using the mo­tor­bike. When the rain eased, I de­cided to just go for it and take my chances. Only a few min­utes after get­ting on the mo­tor­way, how­ever, the heav­ens opened once more and though I for­tu­nately man­aged to get home in one piece, I re­sem­bled the prover­bial drowned rat. A week later, my boots still haven’t com­pletely dried out.

Wel­come to Spain, and the rain.

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