the last municipality in the south of the coast of Catalonia, bordering the Valencian Community, suffered. There were no victims. But, located between the Montsià mountain range and the sea, with two nuclei with one and occupying the entire coastline, the water that descends like a slide through four of the mountain’s ravines destroyed houses, infrastructure, restaurants and public space. The most serious floods were those of 2021. Just then, the architect Roger Sauquet (an expert who was already collaborating with the group of collapsed structures of the firefighters) had just won a Leonardo scholarship from the BBVA Foundation to study post-catastrophic recoveries. Among other scenarios, he had chosen Alcanar. In addition, he created an optional subject at the Vallès School of Architecture to work on resilience to climate change in various scenarios, which a group of students analyzed for months. From there and from the complicity of the , a working group formed by experts emerged that has made it possible to design, implement and evaluate technical solutions to deal with the floods: ponds that distribute the water that comes down from the ravines, before the urban center, renaturalize a plaza or tear down an electrical installation that does not allow water to pass through.
Because downpours are recurrent in the area. After the one in 2023, in 2024 there was no damage, but the same damage that caused havoc and more than 200 deaths in municipalities around Valencia remained. Storm after storm, the damage in the exact same points has been analyzed and compared. And verify key aspects. For example, the measures taken before the water reaches urban areas positively impact the entire community, while solutions that involve shielding houses or specific facilities by raising walls can harm the whole. “In 2023 we saw that the aid invested after 2021 in fortifying houses or structures was not resilient because it displaced the flow of the flood to neighboring plots or increased the water that circulated through the streets. In 2023 it rained half as much as in 2021 and, on the other hand, the water rose ten centimeters more: when the gaze is not collective but individual, the water passes more violently,” Sauquet points out about one of the conclusions of the observations. They have been captured in the Study of architectural, urban and landscape solutions to mitigate the effects of downpours in the municipality of Alcanarof which Sauquet is the main researcher and signed by other professors and students from the Vallès School of Architecture of the .
“The learning from Alcanar is that it is necessary to have a global vision and that there is no single solution, but rather tailored suits. Each territory has its specificities and the perspective of experts from various disciplines (architects, geographers, geologists, civil engineers, landscapers) is necessary to agree on measures at different scales and speeds,” summarizes the architect. The mayor understands that the case of Alcanar should serve as an example for other municipalities: “Technical tables must be created that lead to concrete actions. The political discourse is exhausted: climate change is here to stay and we politicians can do nothing but prevent and manage.” Sauquet also warns that “disasters are an opportunity to introduce changes: because the population is aware, because, and because the territory’s own scars show you what damage the climate has caused and where action is needed.” The study of which he is the principal investigator is committed to considering post-catastrophe spending (adding public and private) as an investment.
From his experience as an architect and also collaborating with the Generalitat Fire Department analyzing affected buildings, Sauquet insists that solutions that work for one environment may not work in another. For example, “in ground-floor buildings in a flood-prone area that is not in the river bed and where the water arrives docilely, the solution may be to raise a first floor.” Regarding deconstruction, he believes that “you have to study it very well and be realistic: dismantling entire urbanizations can be put on the table, but knowing that it will take a very long time to complete and that, in the meantime, you have to act.” “We must also keep in mind that tearing down means building somewhere else,” he adds. On the other hand, he applauds that the Generalitat is, which also affects patches of soil on the southern coast of Alcanar.
The case of Alcanar has shown that it has worked to divert or allow the water that flows down the ravines to spread through pre-urban areas, even above the old N-340 highway, creating generous spaces to stop the flow. They are evacuation areas that when there are no storms can be used for walking. And they can be created with something as simple as flattening land. In addition to these civil works to generate green areas that retain water, in Alcanar it is also on the table to act on a specific nucleus of 12 houses located above the bed of a ravine, that of Llop. And in the Sant Jaume ravine, where the channel had been covered with a slab, it was uncovered and now the water outlet is natural again, but with less flow because the flow has spread further upstream. On the other hand, the study also warns in its conclusions that of the 17 million spent (between compensation to individuals from the insurance consortium and public aid to restore normality), “a large part has been destined to reproduce or even worsen the scenario urban in the face of future downpours”.
The first municipality where the alarm was used on Civil Protection mobile phones
Alcanar was also the first municipality in Catalonia where it used the emergency alarm that the population receives on their cell phones. In this case, to warn them of the risk of flooding. Two weeks ago, it rang three times. The deputy director of Civil Protection of the Generalitat, Imma Soler, explains that the mayor’s request in 2021 to create a system coincided because during the storms the lower part of the town was cut off; with the European directive that required the creation of alert systems. “The EU-Alert, which establishes that all Member States must have a mechanism by which telephone operators allow messages to be sent to mobile phones that are under the coverage of their antennas.”
