It is a sign of all the problems that corner the Tagus basin

Yesterday, the Manzanares S riverIt could significantly The high risk threshold of overflow in Madrid. It is not just an “alert”: the river It has overflowed In the brown, the connection branch between the M-30 and the M-40 was cut for hours, but there are Almost another dozen roads that are still cut by the storm.

As it happened In Seville a few days ago, In Guadalajara last week either It is happening in Toledo Right now, it is very striking. Above all, because it is something that goes far beyond Manzanares.

What is happening? What are we seeing? And it is that the Manzanares is only a sign of endless problems that face the basins of the Tagus and that of the Guadiana: rivers that usually carry very little flow and that, suddenly, channel a huge amount of water.

And, as we said yesterday, the problem is never just the water that falls: the problem is, above all, that water has to go somewhere.

But it is not easy. For many reasons: the first is that ‘natural’, these types of floods are usually accompanied by landslides, phenological realignments and other geological phenomena. The rest, unfortunately, are of human origin.

For decades, we have been building around the channels as if the water they carry out all the water they can carry. We have narrowed the alluvial plains, we have built In flood areaswe have raised concrete structures that today (with these accumulated) are unable to contain the strength of the rivers.

Manzanares is news because it is in Madrid, yes; But it is also news because it will affect hundreds of thousands of people; And, above all, it is news because it is a very clear example of what is happening in the center of the Peninsula: problems, many problems.

The great paradox, again. As We said a few days agothe great paradox that brings us climate change is that we have to prepare to survive periods of increasingly long and intense droughtwhile we plan infrastructure and plans against increasingly intense floods.

Talavera is a good example. According to the Center for Public Works Studies and Experimentation From the Government of Spain, the average flow of the Tagus in March as it passes through the Toledo city is 188 m3/s. Right now it is 750, now has overflowed at many points and the City Council is convinced that it will be up For the rain.

And what do we do? That is the big question. Because, As the meteorologist Jordi Carbó explained“We have fallen into a difficult dynamic to break.” Although it is true that the ECMWF Start drawing some deceleration of rainfall, “forecasts prologize the rains until the beginning of April.”

That is, “it is very likely that in this month of March there will be excellent precipitation records” and, in a context in which March It is becoming more and more rainyit is crucial to take it into account.

But right now it only remains to remember. Today the urgent is to take action, displace people who can be affected and contain the damage. Tomorrow the important thing is to take it into account and put ourselves to work so that the next flood caught us prepared.

Image | ECMWF | CGM Madrid

In Xataka | It has rained so much in Spain that the reservoirs are up. And still nobody wants to remove water restrictions