Expat Travel Mom

Some posts are hard to write because there's too little to say. This one is hard because there's almost too much. In October 2024, the region we now lovingly call home experienced one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern Spanish history. This isn't a post about what went wrong. It's a tribute to what went right afterward, because what I witnessed in the weeks that followed changed how I understand this community, and this country, for good. This post isn't really written in a chronological order, but more of things that happened, what we remember of this time in Valencia's story.

The Rain That Wouldn't Stop

It had been raining for a while, the kind of steady rain that, at first, felt almost welcome. We'd commented on it ourselves, a good storm is nice for the crops, nice for the yards after a dry stretch. We had no idea what was coming. I remember posting about the storm in my backyard, and my sideways avocado tree leaves, thinking "wow, that's a powerful storm!".

On October 29th, a weather system meteorologists call a DANA, an isolated pocket of cold air that collides violently with warm Mediterranean air, stalled directly over our region. In the town of Chiva, nearly 20 inches of rain fell in eight hours, close to a full year's worth of rainfall in less time than a workday. Towns just west and south of us, places we drive through regularly, some we'd visited for wine tastings, took the worst of it.

The Sound That Doesn't Leave You

A sound on every phone in the region at once, the kind of sound you don't forget once you've heard it mean something real. And there it was, spreading across social media and the news at the same time we were receiving it ourselves. 

And everything seemed to go silent, just for a moment, out of sheer shock for what was happening in our backyard of Valencia. We were told to stay home, no movement. Schools canceled. You could hear the sounds of emergency crews desperately trying to reach the roads that needed them to get to the towns. Roads that are never empty were empty because we weren't allowed to drive anywhere. When we were finally able to drive out and see it for ourselves, it was unimaginable. Cars piled against each other on the roadsides, thrown there by the force of the water. Parks simply gone. Homes buried deep in mud.

Near us sits a park with an old bridge, the same beautiful spot where my daughter had taken her senior photos just months earlier. My husband and I decided to drive down there, as it's on the river bed, and we wanted to see how much damage had been done out where we are. My heart sank upon arrival, not because it was literally gone, but because I knew that this was just a fragment of the devastation people were facing just a few miles down the road. It's still hard to describe.

Schools closed, even in areas that hadn't been directly hit, first for a mourning period, then simply because getting buses safely to some students wasn't possible anymore. For months afterward, any real rainfall brought an immediate orange or red alert, and school would close again. Everyone stayed on edge of the sky for a long time after that.

What Happened Next

And then came the part I actually want this post to be about. Thousands and thousands of people, ordinary people, showed up. They came with shovels and boots and buckets to dig out mud, to clean, to paint walls back to something livable. Donations arrived so fast and in such volume, furniture, food, toys, clothing, that collection points had to pause and ask people to stop for a while just to sort through what had already come in.

Facebook and WhatsApp groups formed almost overnight in our local community, connecting people who needed help with people who could give it, organizing carpools for cleanup crews, coordinating supply runs. Store shelves emptied of water, cleaning supplies, and food for a stretch, partly because roads in and out of the city were impassable in places, and partly because so many people were stocking up specifically to cook for and donate to the people who needed it most.

My husband spent a day helping run food truck service into Alfafar, one of the hardest-hit towns, delivering warm meals and water. When it became clear some people in apartment buildings couldn't get out, or couldn't get to the trucks, volunteers started walking meals directly up into the buildings, door to door, floor to floor. He posted about it that night, because so much of what we were seeing online made it sound like everything was already under control. It wasn't, not even close, but the sheer scale of ordinary people showing up to close that gap was something else entirely. Here's a video of his day out.

I found my own way to help too, mostly through the animals. I ended up using our own garage for a while as a drop-off point so people near us could donate supplies for the animal rescue efforts. I spent a lot of those weeks simply connecting people, someone with fencing that needed rebuilding at a rescue center, someone else with the truck and the time to help build it. At one point, a man drove down entirely on his own from Barcelona, no formal group, no assignment, just wanting to help however he could. I got him connected with exactly the right people, and he did.

A Bridge, Renamed

The bridge that thousands of people used to cross from the city into one of the affected towns during those weeks now carries a permanent new name: Pont de la Solidaritat, the Bridge of Solidarity. It's officially recognized now, a lasting tribute to everyone who crossed it carrying help instead of waiting to be asked.

A Special Fallas, at the Ofrenda

The following spring, the Virgin's floral offering carried the moment forward too. That year's design showed two arms, flowers built into the shape of an embrace, holding on to each other. Around the base sat buckets, mud boots, and shovels, the same tools so many hands had carried through those towns. Alongside them, handwritten signs simply saying gracias, more flowers left in quiet thanks. Even Valencia's biggest, most joyful festival, Fallas, made room to remember.

I don't know that I can fully put into words what it does to you, watching a community lose so much in a single afternoon and then, almost immediately, start rebuilding it with their own two hands, for people they'd never met. But I know I'll never see rain the same way again, and I know I'll never forget what this place is actually made of.