Flash flood kills two women in Manzanedo de Valdueza as DANA storm devastates El Bierzo

The flood

On Saturday 15 August evening, an intense storm struck the El Bierzo region of León, unleashing a torrent of water, mud, and large stones across the village of Manzanedo de Valdueza, in the municipality of Ponferrada. The village, with 12 registered inhabitants but swollen by summer visitors celebrating local festivals, saw its streets buried under debris within minutes. Two women were killed, described as around 60 and 80 years old depending on the source. Five people were injured: two men aged 60 and 70, a 30-year-old woman, a three-month-old baby, and a four-year-old child. Four of the injured were admitted to Hospital del Bierzo in Ponferrada. All the victims had been inside a bodega that was completely inundated when the floodwaters burst through.

Rescue and aftermath

A neighbor named Pilar, who helped pull survivors from the bodega, described bathing the babies and wrapping them in towels while assisting a young woman who had been buried in mud, warming her in a bathtub with hot water. She said she had never witnessed anything like it in her nearly 72 years.

I had never seen anything like this, I was born here, this is because of the fire, everything is burned and it has to be related to that, I am going on 72 years, I have seen enormous storms and I have never seen a stone fall from up there.

Neighbors began cleaning streets with shovels and brushes on Sunday morning, facing a desolate landscape of mud, stones, and buried vehicles. The mayor of Ponferrada, Marco Morala, decreed three days of official mourning and convened a minute of silence for Monday 17 August. The municipality activated an emergency contract for cleanup and restricted road access to Manzanedo de Valdueza and Bouzas to residents and authorized personnel. Roads to Carracedo de Compludo, Peñalba de Santiago, and the access to Manzanedo de Valdueza remained cut on Sunday.

Institutional response and resident anger

On Sunday 16 August, government and regional officials visited the village. The subdelegate of the Government in León, Héctor Alaiz Moretón, called for collaboration among all administrations and urged an analysis to prevent a recurrence. He acknowledged that deforestation can produce flash currents affecting villages at the bottom of valleys. Residents confronted the officials with sharp criticism, with one neighbor stating that authorities "already know what can happen" when there is fire and that "the words are already born dead." Another added that after last year's fires, authorities "said they would do a lot and did nothing. There is not even coverage." The territorial delegate of the Junta, Eduardo Diego, called on all administrations to clean the surroundings of villages and work on prevention with technicians.

Broader weather system

The storm formed part of a DANA (Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos), a weather system caused by cold air at altitude interacting with warm surface air, fueled by high temperatures across the peninsula. In Bejís (Castellón), among the most affected municipalities outside León, rainfall reached 186 liters per square meter, 126 of them in a single hour. The president of the Diputación de León, Gerardo Álvarez Courel, stated that "climate change is already here and is not an invention." The president of the Consejo Comarcal del Bierzo, Olegario Ramón, linked the disaster to last year's fires, which left the ground without sufficient vegetation to hold the soil. The president of the Junta de Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, expressed his condolences on X. TV presenter and León native Jesús Calleja posted a video on X.

Lately El Bierzo, here in my land, in León, is being beaten by nature very hard. If it is not one thing it is another. And you are calm in summer and suddenly these things happen. How fragile everything is. All my affection to the families and hopefully they recover as soon as possible.