In Spain, too much has been built in flood-prone areas. Few today question the excesses of brick, especially on the Mediterranean coast, when the last cold drop in Valencia has already claimed more than 200 fatalities. However, there are still urban projects in the design phase or already validated, with thousands of homes and even entire neighborhoods, which are deployed near rivers and beaches.
The almost unprecedented floods in Valencia have increased pressure on some of these plans. Neighborhood groups and environmentalists demand that no more floodable areas be built. Meanwhile, some urban planners and engineers are open to tightening the requirements, while clarifying that current legislation is much more restrictive than that of the open bar years and that there are protection measures to study in some cases.
From the Barcelona coast, where almost 2,000 homes are approved between the Besòs River and the beach, to the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve, where a new Guggenheim headquarters is planned, or a hotel on the banks of the Tagus in its path For Toledo, the list of affected projects is long.
It is not only environmentalism that calls for a review. In Seville, where the great urban candy of Tablada runs next to the Guadalquivir, it has been the mayor who has put on the brakes. “If there are flood zones, it is better to forget,” said José Luis Sanz after the Valencian disaster.
The most forceful entity when it comes to demanding “not one more brick” in floodable perimeters has been Ecologistas en Acción. “We must be blunt: with what has already been built and seeing how the phenomena are worsening with climate change, it must be prohibited directly in those areas,” says its spokesperson, Érika González.
In Catalonia, the association has demanded a moratorium on new urban plans in areas of even low risk. The president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, announced that they will review all the activities carried out in flood-prone areas, but did not specify further. It remains to be seen if those words will translate into the paralysis of any plan in progress. The most controversial is undoubtedly the expansion of the Barcelona-El Prat Airport, defended by the PSC despite being in the Llobregat Delta and affecting a lagoon.
However, in the last two decades different regulations, starting with the Land Law and up to the definition of Preferential Flow Zones – where the flood can be more dangerous – have narrowed the margin to build. “Right now the procedures are long and the administrations are more restrictive, because they know they are taking a risk,” says Julián Galindo, architect and professor of Urban Planning, Territory and Landscape at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC).
This and other urban planners consulted are not so forceful when it comes to challenging any building in any flood-prone area, and remember that projects, whether they are on already urban land or large land transformations, require Civil Protection reports. and the competent water management authority.
“We have much better management capacity than 60 years ago, but at the same time meteorological phenomena with climate change have an impact that requires greater complexity in the measures to be adopted,” says geographer and urban planner Helena Cruz.
Right now, these experts point out, there are autonomous communities in which it is very difficult for projects to be accepted in high-risk areas. And they ask that the so-called return period (the probability with which a flood can occur, which usually ranges from 10 or 500 years) not only be taken into account. For example, in a very summary way, Galindo warns, it is worse to build in an area of low frequency but where the water flows violently – like the Mediterranean torrents – than in an area more prone to floods but with rivers that are better monitored and surrounded by lands with greater capacity to absorb water.
Four examples only in the Barcelona area
In the metropolitan area of Barcelona alone, at least four flood zone plans are on the table, each in a different processing phase but all with one element in common: the opposition of neighborhood and environmentalist platforms. The most emblematic and also advanced is the one that plans to build 1,800 homes, in addition to other equipment and an audiovisual center, in the surroundings of the Three Chimeneas, in Sant Adrià del Besòs.
The Urban Master Plan (PDU) is approved, but the Entesa platform for a Great Coastal Park has appealed it to the courts for being in a maritime and river flood zone, since it is next to the Besòs river and on the seafront. Pending the ruling, the validation of the plan has been accompanied by a series of requirements, such as the elevation of levels of up to five meters, the installation of a marsh to laminate the water or the incorporation of an alert system.
The other examples of Barcelona, a city conditioned by its high density and problems of access to housing, are in Mollet del Vallès (a plan with 2,800 new apartments), Cornellà de Llobregat (the Ribera-Salines, with 2,400 homes next door of the Llobregat river) and Rubí. This last plan is more modest, with only three blocks of homes, but on the banks of one of the streams that overflowed violently in 1962 and left between 600 and 1,000 dead, which has provoked the rejection of neighbors and political opposition.
Murcia and the Balearic Islands: clash over regulation
In addition to urban plans, in some autonomous communities the conflict rises directly to the regulations that affect flood zones. It occurs in the Balearic Islands and especially in Murcia, the region with the most floodable areas in Spain. In the first case, the Administrative Simplification Law promoted by the PP, now in parliamentary process, will give way to construction on rural land, which the Terraferida entity estimates could affect more than 570 plots in flood-prone areas.
In Murcia, the dispute goes back a long way. In 2022, the regional government accused the Segura Hydrographic Confederation (CHS) of preparing a “very extensive” flood map that forced the paralysis of “all construction in the city.” After a period of allegations, and with complaints also from the construction sector, the CHS ended up revising downwards a total of 1,600 floodable hectares.
Even so, the Murcian capital continues to have facilities for building. The Ministry of the Interior, Emergencies and Territorial Planning approved a regulation to allow construction in Preferential Flow Zones for those municipalities that have more than a third of their surface in these perimeters, which prevents them from directing future developments towards non-flood zones. In fact, this is a possibility contemplated by state legislation.
Cases in Alicante, Valladolid, Toledo and Urdaibai
One of the plans that has raised the most dust in recent times is precisely in the Valencian Community. This is the growth of Guardamar del Segura, where the river of the same name flows out. They plan to develop an area that borders wetlands, which aspires to house 1,000 new homes and, for more INRIhas a part of the perimeter affected by level 2 (the second most dangerous of the 6) of the Valencian flood plan (Patricova). The organization Friends of the Wetlands (AHSA) of the South of Alicante has already presented allegations to the project.
Far from the coast, in the interior of the peninsula, there are also developments in flood-prone areas in which these days the opposition has increased several degrees. 25 kilometers from Valladolid, in the town of La Pedraja del Portillo, with barely 1,000 inhabitants, more than 1,200 homes are planned in a macro-urbanization that is rejected not only by environmentalists, but also by local technicians. Flooding is in this case one of the various environmental arguments put forward by its detractors.
In Toledo, there is also a commitment to new developments and one of them, the Special Plan for Interior Reform and Improvement (PERIM) of the Cava bridge, contemplates building a luxury hotel next to the Tagus. Compared to the promoters who defend the initiative, there is rejection from neighborhood associations, environmental groups, urban planners and even experts from the Tajo Chair of the University of Castilla-La Mancha.
The latter prepared a report in which they warned that the hotel and other facilities would be located in areas where water is “preferentially” concentrated during floods (the so-called Preferential Flow Zone).
Finally, there is the case of the Guggenheim Museum and its two new headquarters in the Basque Country, both in floodable areas. Although for now it is just a project, if it materializes they will be literally on the water, linked by a green corridor between the towns of Gernika and Murueta.
The Gernika headquarters would be the old Dalia cutlery factory, right on one of the banks of the Oka River. The Basque Water Agency (URA) has already warned in a report sent to the Basque Parliament of the “significant risk situation” of flooding at the site, although with the recommended measures the Government considers that it can move forward with the plan.
Regarding the second headquarters, that of Murueta, in the heart of the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve, the Coastal Directorate agreed to the request of the Provincial Council of Bizkaia to reduce the protection of the coast to only 20 meters compared to the 100 that were previously established. Entities such as Greenpeace and local platforms have already taken it to court.
Journalists Carmen Bachiller, Javier Ayuso, Belén Ferreras, Elisa Almagro and Esther Ballesteros have collaborated on this report.
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