Two people have died in Spain’s Catalonia region due to flooding

Two people have died and another is missing after heavy rain and flooding hit Catalonia, in north-eastern Spain, authorities said on Sunday.

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Catalan regional president Salvador Illa confirmed the second death in a social media post on Sunday.

Firefighters said the missing person had been swept away by a stream in Pineda de Mar, a town north of Barcelona.

Catalan Civil Protection has sent a new Es-Alert on Sunday to the mobile phones of residents in Vallès Oriental, Maresme, la Selva, Baix Empordà and Gironès.

The message urges people to comply with travel restrictions while the torrential rain continues. Residents in the affected counties are advised to avoid all non-essential journeys.

At 16:48 on Saturday, another Es-Alert was sent to 20 Catalan counties, recommending that all activities and travel be suspended from 20:00. The alert warned that the severe weather could persist until 14:00 on Sunday.

Heavy rain has been falling since midday on Saturday along a stretch of the Catalan coast, which remains under an emergency alert due to the formation of a convective mesoscale system over the Mediterranean.

By midnight on Sunday, between 100 and 200 litres of rain per square metre had fallen across Barcelonès. Meteocat recorded 190.8 litres in the Raval, 170.3 in the University Zone on Diagonal Avenue — the highest total in 18 years — and 152 around the Badalona Museum, (highest figure in 21 years).

In the Raval, 3.4 litres fell in a single minute and 36.1 litres in just half an hour. According to Meteocat, the total was almost double the 95.4 litres recorded in the neighbourhood on 24 March 2017.

The agency said heavy and torrential rain continued into the early hours of Sunday, with bands of showers slowly moving northwards across Catalonia.

“We still have hours to go,” Meteocat warned on social media, adding that rainfall totals would be exceptional both in terms of volume and geographical extent.

The president of the Government of Catalonia, Salvador Illa, has urged citizens “not to let their guard down”. He spoke of “a complicated night” and an episode that “has not yet come to an end”.

Rivers on alert, rescues and trains halted

The Catalan Water Agency (ACA) has reported that the final stretch of the Besòs has exceeded the danger threshold, with an imminent risk of flooding. At 03:00 the river was flowing through Santa Coloma de Gramenet with a discharge of 520 cubic metres per second, and the ACA issued a hydrological risk warning.

By three in the morning, Catalonia’s fire service had received 682 calls, most of them about flooding, and had not yet dealt with incidents involving serious injuries. Barcelona’s Bombers logged a total of 910 calls and 145 operations related to the storm by 7:20.

At 05:10 firefighters were called to Granollers because of a violent downpour and the sudden swelling of streams. They are working to rescue several people trapped in their cars at the approaches to a flooded roundabout, some of them standing on the roofs of their vehicles.

Heavy rain overnight in Biscay as well

On Saturday the storm also affected northern Spain. The Basque country emergency centre recorded a total of 150 rain-related incidents in the province of Biscay by 20:30, 137 of them in Bilbao, with flooding and pools of water on the roads. In some parts of the Old Town the water reached knee height, and several residents were unable to get into their homes. Some businesses put up wooden boards to keep the water out.

Traffic through the La Avanzada tunnels in Leioa was cut off, and similar incidents were reported in Getxo, Basauri, Laudio, Galdakao, Sestao and Erandio. Euskalmet kept the orange alert in place until 00:00, when the rain was expected to ease, before switching to a yellow advisory until 06:00 on Sunday.