The ongoing emergency in the province of Valencia, where upturned cars clog the streets and the dread of further bodies clogs the mind, is a reminder of the death-force of water.

The boggling numbers (158 and counting) mean it will surely becomes Spain’s most deadly flooding event. It is a grim record, difficult to contemplate; yet there is reason to hope that it will be long-remembered.

The high-watermark of Spanish flooding tragedies in living memory belongs to the province of Aragón. An event on 7th August 1996 placed the village of Biescas, and a campsite named ‘Las Nieves’, securely in my long-term memory.

I was on a year free, learning Spanish in Barcelona. Because reading the daily newspapers was part of my language lessons, the horror of what happened in the high mountains became a subject of daily study. I was a regular camper at that time. I had stayed in campsites such as this. It all felt so personal.

Approximately 86 people died that night in 1996, and nearly 200 were injured. Almost all were holiday-makers on the foothills of the Pyrenees, in the height of summer. Before midnight, as the rains fell harder and harder, their tents and caravans had been swept away by a sudden deluge. One body would be carried more than 8km down-river. The last would be uncovered almost a year later; that of a six year old boy. The dead of Las Nieves then tolled to 87.

This week’s flooding disaster in Valencia will, I expect, pass through mourning, and then through arduous clean-up, in order finally to rest on the theme of responsibility. At its heart lies a simple question: was this event predictable?

In Aragón, it took years of complex judicial process for this simple question to be answered. Local authorities argued furiously that the Las Nieves flood was an act of God; rainfall of such magnitude was unprecedented, capricious and unforeseeable.

But a deeper truth would emerge. The construction of the campsite in its specific location had been rejected by a planning expert, when proposed ten years previously. The written expert judgment of engineer Emilio Pérez Bujarrabal was unambiguous: the proposed location of Las Nieves represented a disproportionate flooding risk for human life and property, due to its location at the cone-like base of two mountain ravines.

His opinion was overruled by local authorities and municipality politicians. Tourism was an important and growing sector in the 1980s. The mountain altitude of Biescas offered fresh summer air, compared to the sweltering coasts. The development they named Las Nieves (loosely translated as ‘Snowlands’) represented significant inward investment, which would attract upwards of 600 tourists. Economic interests seem to have won the argument.

In the end, almost none of the campsite victims died through drowning. Most suffered fatal crush injuries; the raging torrent contained logs, mud and rocks, as well as water. All had built up behind a local bridge above the campsite until, in total darkness, the bridge collapsed and hell spewed forth.

Reading those accounts, in 1996, was to come closer to understanding apocalypse.

Despite having written proof that flooding was indeed predictable, the families of the victims endured years of legal battles with local and national authorities, in pursuit of compensation. Their case was strengthened with the testimony of respected Aragón botanist, Pedro Montserrat Recorder, who uncovered a text from an official topographical review of the area, pre-dating the construction of Las Nieves. The excerpt predicted that the drainage from the two ravines would, despite redirection by public works over the years, one day ‘return to its own’. Montserrat Recorder’s conclusion was devastating: had the campsite been situated 200 metres further south, it would have avoided all flooding risk.

In 2005, a settlement of €11.2m was agreed with some of the families of Las Nieves, awarded against the public purses of Spain’s Minister of the Environment and the local Government of Aragón. To date, not all payments have been received.

What happened this week in Valencia, witnessed on camera with such raw intensity, will take time to fully understand. People must be fairly compensated, and this will be a winding path. But, ultimately, society must draw learning from what has transpired. This last chapter is always the most difficult.

2021 saw the 25th anniversary of the Las Nieves campsite disaster. Families got in touch with the Mayor of Biescas, Nuria Pargada, wishing to know if a civic ceremony would take place. After all, the tragedy had been remembered on previous significant anniversaries.

But in 2021 there came a change of policy. No official remembrance would take place. The Mayor reportedly made this decision based on ongoing Covid restrictions, and, in her words, a desire for the locals to ‘turn a new page’.