Victim’s body found a year after being swept away by floods that killed more than 230 people in Spain
Spanish authorities announced Thursday that they had found the body of a 56-year-old man who died after being swept away by floods in the eastern region of Valencia last year, the deadliest disaster the country has seen in decades.
DNA analysis has confirmed that a body found in the Turia River on Tuesday belonged to one of three people missing since the tragedy of October 29 last year, which killed more than 230 people, a Valencia court said in a statement.
The victim, like the two other missing people, “had already been declared legally dead” and the toll had therefore not increased, the court added.
The water had carried the body about 30 kilometers from the town of Pedralba to the municipality of Manises, outside the regional capital Valencia, Spain’s third largest city.
Bernat Armangue/AP
A state funeral will be held in the city next week, on October 29, to mark the first anniversary of the disaster, which raised serious questions about the adequacy of warning systems and emergency response.
Activists have taken to the streets every month, demanding the resignation of regional government head Carlos Mazon over his handling of the floods, with the next protest planned for Saturday.
Regional authorities insist they did not have the necessary information to alert the population earlier.
Satellite images before and after of the city of Valencia illustrated the scale of the disaster, showing the transformation of the Mediterranean metropolis into a landscape flooded with muddy waters.
Maxar Technologies via REUTERS 
Zoe Wilkes, a British woman living in Valencia, started a group of volunteers to help rebuild the area, BBC News reported.
“It was just shocking,” Wilkes told BBC News. “You couldn’t understand how strong the water had to be to throw cars around like toys.”
Late last month, the region was hit by further severe weather when Storm Gabrielle flooded the area, BBC News reported. Images show flooding in parts of Valencia and Zaragoza, and the local weather agency said more than 7 inches of rain fell in six to eight hours around the Ebro Delta. No injuries were reported, but schools, libraries and parks were closed.
