Dolors Benítez and her husband had to abandon their house in 2021. It was demolished as part of the flood plan for the Salut neighborhood, in Salou, historically affected by floods. Where your rental chalet was yesterday, today a new promenade has opened which runs along the canal of the formidable Barenys ravine. But few people still seem satisfied: at the end of September, a downpour again caused water to enter certain farms.
From her new apartment, located on the ground floor of the newly paved Rambla de Barenys, Dolors saw water flooding the entrance to her property. “How is this possible?” he lamented this Wednesday, pointing to the trace of water still visible on his stairs. Last Monday, with the announcement of the cold weather that hit neighboring Tarragona – not so much in Salou – he barely slept. “Honestly, I was terrified,” she said.
There is disagreement over the causes of these latest floods. As the work on the pipeline of the ravine upstream is unfinished, Salou City Hall considers that it was the continued actions of the Catalan Water Agency (ACA) which caused the overflow which flooded the municipal football stadium, which borders the bed. of the river. Additionally, they argue that only some parking lots flooded occasionally, which has nothing to do with what happened before. But the ACA, which depends on the Generalitat, considers that the capacity for evacuating rainwater in urbanization remains insufficient, even if we can put an end to flooding.
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 were buildings, there is now an open and spacious public space,” say town hall sources.
The history of Salut de Salou, with its more than 2,000 apartments and summer apartments, is that of a neighborhood flooded time and time again. Built on former marshes in the 1960s, it is sandwiched between the beach and the mouth of the usually dry Barenys ravine. When it rains, the water flows in its channel and reaches the urbanization, also located below sea level, transforming 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 one and a half meters in height, and it It is common to see how it carries away cars and enters businesses,” explains Rafael Querol, president of the Neighborhood Association, created in 1999 with the aim of finding a solution to flooding.
A chain that never ends
The battle to end the Barenys floods is almost as old as the Salvation Quarter itself. And this took place alongside the construction of new houses in flood-prone areas 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 planning project aimed at channeling the ravine has undergone several stoppages, modifications and legal setbacks over the decades, but work finally began in 2022. Along the way, the Town Hall wanted to build a hotel complex on the land surrounding the torrent , Sector 03. , but the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) overturned it with a ruling in 2015.
The most striking thing about the work started in 2022 is that it required the expropriation and demolition of 29 homes. This is not the first time that Spain has had to deconstruct to avoid flooding: entire cities have been displaced, in Valencia or in the Catalan Pyrenees, because of flooding. In the case of Salou it was something simpler: removing a row of buildings to widen the street and placing four concrete caissons underneath that can channel all the water from the ravine to the sea.
In total, the action amounts to 17 million euros, supported 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, the section going back towards Via Cavet is now missing. A modification of the natural channel which will connect to the new pipelines and which, 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 judgment.
The problem is that at the start of the work, the maximum planned flow rate was lower. So the ACA had to stop them sine diewhile waiting to modify municipal planning and finance new land expropriations. “During the execution of a project, we have more detailed knowledge of the real physical conditions of the ground,” apologizes the organization.
This way, neighbors do not know when the torrent will definitely be channeled. “We have the feeling that too many failures have been made, and even once this is over, we will remain calm,” admits Márquez, aware that the tragedy in Valencia fatally affected flood zones considered to be at low risk.
Complaints about more buildings in the neighborhood
On a brief walk around the neighborhood, you will see that 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 Apolo Farms, had to evacuate water from her premises on several occasions and the September storm flooded her car. “1,400 euros for repairs, fortunately it’s covered by insurance,” he explains.
What worries some neighbors is that the municipality, while waiting for the rapid channeling of the ravine to put an end to the flooding, is not giving up its efforts to continue building in the area.
The new opportunity comes from the old railway line which crossed the city and which should become in the years to come what we call the Civic Axis along which a tram runs. But not only that: the Town Hall wants to take advantage of this and build officially protected housing in an area currently subject to frequent flooding. The plan remains to be defined.
According to a Civil Protection report, part of this sector is assigned as a privileged flow zone of the ravine, that is to say the perimeter where the water can fall with greater height and speed. But the municipality and the ACA maintain that the map will change when the channeling 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 exempt from the effects due to river flooding,” observe sources from the Catalan water management body.
However, many people still do not trust health. Some banners are already opposed to the project. “It seems like we haven’t learned anything,” Querol says.
