‘Floodable Spain’ by elDiario.es, awarded at the API Investigative Journalism Awards

The IVs API Investigative Journalism Awards have recognized the project with a special mention in the Data category “Floodable Spain”an investigation by elDiario.es that reveals that more than one million homes in Spain are located in areas at risk of flooding, carried out by Pau Rodríguez, Victòria Oliveres and Raúl Sánchez. The awards, organized by the Association of Investigative Journalists (API), have also awarded the main prize for reporting ‘X-ray of Health in Spain’prepared by DataRTVE, RTVE’s data and visual narratives team.

The research “Floodable Spain” highlights the growing threat that floods represent for the Spanish territory, through a comprehensive approach that combines rigorous data, interactive visualizations and testimonies from people affected by these extreme floods. The jury highlighted that the work “brings to the table a topic that does not appear on the public agenda, and highlights the weight of the information it includes, as well as the value of the sources used and the narrative used.”

Thanks to the analysis of the locations of more than 12 million buildings, the research shows that at least 4.3% of Spanish homes are at risk of flooding. In addition, it denounces how the lack of regulation has facilitated the urban development of thousands of homes in areas at risk of floods throughout the country, which has generated a compensation bill of 7,000 million euros in three decades.

In this IV edition of the API Awards, around thirty media works have been evaluated for the different categories.

The project “La España Inundable” was previously awarded with a second prize in the Vicente Verdú Awards of Journalism and Innovation and was a finalist in the climate journalism awards Climate Journalism Awardsawarded by the European Journalism Center and supported by the Google News Initiative.