Dolors Benítez and her husband had to abandon their house in 2021. It was demolished as part of the plan against flooding in the Salut neighborhood, in Salou, historically affected by floods. Where yesterday your rental chalet stood, today a new walk has just opened that covers the channeling of the dreaded Barenys ravine. But few still seem satisfied: at the end of September a downpour once again caused water to enter some farms.
From her new apartment, a ground floor right on the newly paved street of Rambla de Barenys, Dolors saw how the water flooded the entrance to her property. “How is it possible?” he lamented this Wednesday, while pointing to the water mark still visible on his stairs. Last Monday, with the announcement of the cold drop that hit neighboring Tarragona –not so much in Salou–, he barely slept. “Honestly, I was terrified,” she says.
There are disagreements about what caused these latest floods. With the works to channel the ravine upstream unfinished, the Salou City Council considers that it was the ongoing actions of the Catalan Water Agency (ACA) that caused the overflow that flooded the Municipal Football Stadium, which borders the riverbed. of the river Furthermore, they defend that only some parking lots were flooded occasionally, nothing to do with what happened before. But the ACA, which depends on the Generalitat, believes that the rainwater drainage capacity in the urbanization remains insufficient, regardless of whether the floods can be put an end to.
As for the new ride, it opens this Saturday. The event was scheduled for last week, but was postponed due to DANA in Valencia. “Where there used to be buildings, now there is an open and spacious public space,” say sources from the town hall.
The history of Salut de Salou, with its more than 2,000 apartments and summer apartments, is that of a neighborhood that has been flooded on countless occasions. Built on old marshes in the 1960s, it is sandwiched between the beach and the mouth of the Barenys ravine, which is usually dry. When it rains, the water flows down its channel and hits the urbanization, which is also below sea level, turning its streets into rivers.
Only in the last two decades have floods been recorded in 2004, 2006, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2019… “Sometimes the water reaches a meter and a half in height, and it is common to see how it carries away cars and enters businesses,” says Rafael Querol, president of the Neighborhood Association, which was created in 1999 with the aim of finding a solution to the floods.
A channel that never ends
The battle to end the Barenys floods is almost as old as the Salut neighborhood itself. And it has run parallel to the construction of new homes in flood zones with the approval of the municipal governments (first that of Vila-seca and since 1991, after its independence, that of Salou) and the Generalitat.
The urban plan to channel the ravine has suffered several stoppages, modifications and judicial setbacks over the decades, but work finally began in 2022. Along the way, the City Council wanted to build a hotel complex on the land surrounding the torrent, the Sector 03, but the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) overthrew it with a ruling in 2015.
The most striking thing about the works that began in 2022 is that they required the expropriation and demolition of 29 homes. This is not the first time that Spain has had to deconstruct to avoid floods; entire towns have been moved, in Valencia or the Catalan Pyrenees, due to flooding. In the case of Salou, it was something simpler: eliminate a line of buildings to widen the street and place four concrete caissons underneath that can channel all the water from the ravine towards the sea.
In total, the action amounts to 17 million euros, which has been assumed by the Catalan Water Agency (ACA), although the work is carried out by the public company Infraestructures.cat. After completing the first section of work, that of the urbanized area, now the one that goes upstream towards Via Cavet is missing. A modification of the natural channel that will connect with the new pipelines and that, as currently planned, must be capable of swallowing 273 m3/s of water, which would correspond to a return period of 500 years, as required by the TSJC ruling .
The problem is that when the works began, the maximum flow that was going to be assumed was lower. So the ACA had to stop them sine diewaiting to modify municipal urban planning and finance new land expropriations. “When executing a project, there is more detailed knowledge of the real physical conditions of the land,” the organization apologizes.
In this way, the neighbors do not know when the torrent will definitively be channeled. “The feeling is that too many botches have been made, not even when this is finished we will remain calm,” admits Márquez, aware that the Valencia tragedy fatally affected flood-prone areas that were considered low risk.
Complaints about more buildings in the neighborhood
During a brief walk through the neighborhood, you can see how most of the ground floors have water marks, dry mud accumulates on the sides of the streets and the asphalt is degraded everywhere. Joan Miquel Vila, owner of the Apolo farms, has had to bail out water from his premises more than once and the September storm flooded his car. “1,400 euros for repairs, luckily it is covered by insurance,” he says.
What worries some neighbors is that the council, while waiting for the rapid channeling of the ravine to put an end to the floods, does not give up its efforts to continue building in the area.
The new opportunity comes with the old train track that ran through the town, and which should become in the coming years the so-called Civic Axis along which a tram runs. But not only: the City Council wants to take advantage and build officially protected housing in a perimeter that is currently subject to frequent flooding. The plan is yet to be defined.
According to a Civil Protection report, part of that sector is affected as the preferred flow zone of the ravine, that is, the perimeter where the water can fall with greater height and speed. But the council and the ACA defend that the map will change when the canalization of the ravine becomes a reality. “Once the hydraulic correction works of the ravine are completed, the urban area will no longer be affected by its avenues; The Civic Axis will also be free of effects due to river flooding,” observe sources from the Catalan water management body.
However, there are many who still do not trust Health. Some banners are already opposing the project. “It seems as if we have not learned anything,” says Querol.
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