The thousand dead of the torrential rains of Barcelona in 1962: “We have already collected 150 corpses in Tarrasa”

Given the dramatic consequences that Dana is causing in the province of Valencia – which has caused 73 deaths and dozens missing as of yesterday’s edition –, the oldest residents of Barcelona fear that the devastating scenes that occurred will be repeated. They lived as young people with Torrential rains of September 1962. We talk about the greatest hydrological catastrophe in the history of Spain and, with a lot of difference, the one that has caused the most dead.

«Some neighbors still remember now how, with the light of the only car that was then in the Torre-Romeu neighborhood, that of the pharmacist, they guided themselves to rescue the residents of Sabadell that the flood swept away from the water and mud. […]. The neighbors, in the rain, fled frightened from the houses and, when they could not flee, they were engaged in the terraces and roofs to ask for relief […]. The same neighbors saw how water took them, ”said Catalan historian Jordi Calvet, who survived the tragedy.

The current images of survivors loaded onto trucks or refugees in the Valencian mountains waiting to be rescued, with many buildings covered by water, the hundreds of cars swept away by the floods as if they were toys, the more than sixty roads cut off, The suspended railway services and cut-off towns are bringing to mind the nightmare they experienced in 1962 among older Barcelona residents. Another episode of cold weather that caused torrential rains that devastated the province and left nearly a thousand dead, a figure that is difficult to imagine today, even if it occurred only sixty years ago.

An unimaginable number

In Barcelona they have never seen anything remotely similar to what they lived on September 25, 1962. Nor in Spain, at least since you have records. The official number of the dead was 617 in just a few hours, although recent studies say there were about a thousand. Corpses appeared kilometers away from their homes. Entire neighborhoods completely disappeared. Cars, trucks and buss were dragged by the floods. Without a doubt, it was the worst natural catastrophe in the recent history of the country.

For several days, ABC was collecting the testimonies of the victims, which were overwhelming: «The parish priest of the Church of San Pedro, near the missing bridge of San Mus, had registered more than 200 parishioners in their parish, but almost all have all disappeared on the fateful night” or “until eight o’clock at night, more than 150 bodies have been collected in the Terrasa area, although it is estimated that the number exceeds 200.”

Everything happened suddenly, at a time when Spain did not have sufficient means to anticipate what was going to happen. The first rains They began to fall gently on the morning of September 25. In principle they were a blessing for a province like Barcelona, ​​since it had been affected by a strong drought for many months. What no one could foresee were the dimensions that the storm would reach shortly after, growing until accumulating, in just two and a half hours, the 212 liters per square meter mentioned.

avenues of water

That amount of water was too much for areas like the Vallès Occidental and, especially, for the triangle formed by the cities of Sabadell, Terrasa and Rubí, where traditionally harmless streams, or channels that had disappeared for years, became immense avenues of water that They swallowed everything in their path: hundreds of homes, numerous factories during the working day and, of course, people.

Rubí, for example, counted nearly 300 deaths and Tarrasa surpassed them. The majority were Andalusian immigrants who had arrived in Catalonia to make a living in the area’s industry and who had built their homes with precarious materials. «Who would have thought that here, in this large expanse of mud, there were built more than 130 modest houses of textile workers, two factories, a bridge and the municipal slaughterhouse of Rubí, of which only the old plane tree that shaded the patio remains standing. inside?” he asked himself. special correspondent of this diary.

A few hours after the storm began, the Besòs and Llobregat rivers, which limited the city of Barcelona to the north and south, overflowed. Communications, electricity and the main roads between the capital and satellite towns were cut off. That was the cause of confusion reigning at the beginning, reaching false information about the dimensions that had reached the floods around the city.

Up to the houses

Just read extracts from the chronicles published in ABC the following days, to get an idea of ​​the catastrophe that occurred on September 25, 1962. For example: «One of the dead, aged 17, upon seeing that his house was flooding, crossed the roof to another adjacent one, in the precise moment when it sank. “He was killed.” Also: “In San Baudilio de Llobregat, an unidentified body has been collected, which is supposed to descend through the waters from other populations located at higher altitude.”

«In Tarrasa, in one of the bars where they had sought refuge, the victims saw how water entered flows inside. They climbed onto the tables until they saw, terrified, that the water was increasing its level incessantly and taking away everything in its path. Some threw themselves into the water, others were dragged by her, and almost all with the same unfortunate luck, ”could be read later. And he added: “On the beach from Barcelonesa to beyond Badalona, ​​numerous bodies of animals appear floating on the waters that were swept away by the flood.”

These are just some of the stories that occurred that day. Many others would remain in the memory of the more than 12,000 victims of the catastrophe, without forgetting the thousands of injured and evacuated. All of them added up to losses of billions of pesetas.

Days later they managed to channel the overflowing rivers. The Hydrographic Confederation of the Eastern Pyrenees built concrete defenses 3.5 meters high. Different parts of the river were also excavated and filled with earth to soften the slopes. Finally, its channel was expanded so that it could admit a flow of 1,350 cubic meters per second. Sixty years later, the neighbors find it hard to imagine how a river that barely runs water could engulfed whole neighborhoods in just a few hours.