☔️ Spain is drowning. Literally
Also: Spain gets a bad corruption grade...and sharks!
Madrid | Issue #136
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Wet enough for ya?
🌧️ In Spain, the rain falls mainly… f’ing everywhere!
Rain, rain, go away. Leonardo, Marta…we never invited you, nor did we invite your friends who showed up earlier — you know, Francis, Goretti, Harry, Ingrid, Joseph and Kristin.
Seriously, enough. The only thing more demoralizing than living through January — the rainiest in 25 years, they say, after the contributions of the six alphabetically named storms Frances through Kristin dumped an average of 119.3 liters on each and every square meter of Spain — was the first week of February, when Leo and Marta poured about 20% more than in the previous week.
For those wondering why we’re talking about the weather instead of something “important,” we’d like to remind you that weather is the original safe space.
Research suggests Brits spend about two days a year — more than four months over a lifetime — talking about it. And it’s been called “conversation’s last refuge,” because it’s the only thing we can still half-agree on. Of course, we’re not British. But after this much rain, we emotionally qualify for citizenship.
But how crazy is it? Let’s visit Grazalema, a “Pueblo Blanco” in the hills north of Cádiz. There, over the last three weeks, some 2,000 liters fell per square meter — more than a year’s worth of rain, or what meteorologist Nahel Belgherze called on X “hydrologically absurd.”
That causes…problems. Grazalema’s approximately 2,000 residents were evacuated during Leonardo due to fears that the ground was unstable. “This situation is completely abnormal,” said Juanma Moreno, president of Andalucía’s regional government. “The ground is literally spewing water."
And that’s only one part of the 11,000 people who had to leave their homes over the risks of floods and mud slides. On Sunday, flooding forced the closing of some 179 highways, mostly in Andalucía, according to the DGT traffic authority, as well as local and long-distance trains. And, in the biggest news (kidding), one La Liga fútbol game was postponed ⚽.
Deaths have been reported. Five have died in Spain and Portugal, according to reports. (The precipitation is not just rain: one victim was a snowplow driver who plunged down a slope in a mountain pass.)
There is good news, though, right? Indeed, there is. Spain, as you know (right?), often struggles with drought conditions. Just a few years ago, a church tower re-emerged from a rapidly depleting reservoir in Catalonia, where boats had to remove fish from oxygen-starved waters to protect drinking supplies.
Now there’s water aplenty. Over the last two weeks, the rains added more than 10,000 cubic hectometers (a.k.a. a lot) to Spain’s reservoirs, breaking 30-year-old records, according to the Ecological Transition Minister Sara Aagesen.
Just look at this graph. With 43,341 hm3, Spain’s reservoirs are now more than 77% full, about 24 percentage points higher than the 10-year average, according to our fave site Embalses.net. Many dams have had to dump overflow water for the first time in decades. (Only Murcia — poor Murcia — is still super dry.)
Amen. “The main implication is that the recurring sword of Damocles of drought has been postponed for months and even more than a year if it doesn’t rain anymore,” Javier Martín-Vide, emeritus professor of physical geography at the University of Barcelona, told ABC.
On the political front. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez promised aid for distressed farmers who’ve suffered massive crop damage, which his government can do; he’s also called for all political parties to join together to create a national climate change pact, which, considering he doesn’t have the votes to pass basically anything, his government cannot do.
Want more rain? You may be in luck: Storm Nils has arrived.
More news below. 👇👇
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💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties
1. 🗳️ Vox surges in Aragón as Extremadura heads toward political deadlock
Tough to swallow. Aragón just delivered an election result that feels like deja vu all over again: the center-right Partido Popular (PP) came first in regional polls, but not nearly far enough to govern alone.
Incumbent regional president Jorge Azcón won the election, but actually slipped slightly compared to 2023 (from around 35% to 34%), leaving the PP well short of a majority. In other words, the right won big… just not the PP.
The real winner is Vox. The far-right party surged from 11% to 18% of the vote, doubling its seats from 7 to 14 and turning itself into the unavoidable kingmaker.
Vox boss Santiago Abascal not only campaigned; he basically treated Aragón like a national battleground, and voters responded with what Vox called “more than double the Vox.”
The big loser was the center-left PSOE. The socialists, led by Pilar Alegría, dropped hard, falling from 30% to 24% and losing five seats. It’s one of the party’s worst results in the region’s democratic history, and it confirms a broader pattern: Aragón, like Extremadura before it, is drifting rightward.
That drift. Since 2023, the combined right-wing bloc has jumped from 47% to 55% of the vote, the strongest conservative showing in decades.
So why did Vox do so well? Part of it is simple voter migration: polls suggest the PSOE lost about 16% of its 2023 voters to the PP or Vox, and the PP itself bled around 10% of its support directly to Vox. Plus, the youths like Vox. 🤷
Vox also pulled in new voters who didn’t participate last time. And they’ve been tapping into very specific anger in Aragón: frustration in the farming sector over the Mercosur trade deal from Brussels, immigration, and the general sense that rural Spain is being ignored.
So what happens now? Well… The PP has almost no path forward without Vox. There is no viable center-left coalition.
That leaves Azcón dependent on Vox (and Vox knows it). Abascal has already signaled he will demand a high price this time: real power. He wants leadership of several ministries and further right policies on immigration, climate, and public spending.
That’s not all. After recent elections in Extremadura, the PP and Vox are locked in a standoff that could end with voters being sent back to the polls.
The PP won the elections last December, and María Guardiola (the current regional leader) is the candidate again, but she doesn’t have the numbers to govern alone. Vox’s support is essential (shocker), and Abascal’s party is refusing to simply abstain or back her from outside the government.
The investiture vote is set for March 3, and negotiations have gone nowhere, with both sides now fighting publicly as much as privately. If Guardiola fails the first investiture vote, the region enters a two-month countdown before new elections.
Fun times ahead. 🎉
2. 📉 Spain slips down the global corruption rankings (not a great look, people)
Oh, the humanity! According to Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), Spain dropped three places in the global classification this year, landing at 49 out of 182 countries, with a score of 55/100.
That puts Spain in the same bracket as Cyprus and Fiji, just above Italy, and below countries like Saudi Arabia and Rwanda.
FYI, The CPI is the world’s most widely cited corruption benchmark. It doesn’t measure corruption directly, but rather perceptions of corruption in the public sector, using data from institutions like the World Bank and the World Economic Forum.