Lorraine Williamson
Spain has spent weeks lurching from one weather warning to the next. Now, as villages in Granada province deal with waterlogged homes and mud-filled streets, help has arrived from an unexpected place: Valencia flood survivors.
A volunteer team linked to Nave Albal, a grassroots collective formed after Valencia’s DANA devastation, has travelled south to support storm-hit communities around Granada. They’re working alongside firefighters from the NGO Bombers pel Món, bringing heavy-duty kit and hard-earned know-how.
This is what mutual aid looks like when the people turning up on your street understand the smell of damp plaster — because they’ve lived it.
A convoy built for recovery, not photo ops
Moreover, the Valencia group didn’t come empty-handed. Local reports describe a convoy carrying pumps, hoses and cleaning equipment, plus basic protective kit that becomes precious in a clean-up: boots, gloves, shovels, buckets and plastic suits.
In Huétor Tájar, the firefighters have been using large motor pumps to remove standing water from a building under construction that’s set to become a care home. Workers were evacuated as a precaution.
Canal Sur puts the scale into numbers: a small team, but a serious load — around 7,000 kilos of aid and machinery heading into towns that are still trying to dry out.
Why Granada, and why now?
The towns receiving support include Dúdar, Quéntar, Pinos Genil and Huétor Tájar. They sit in different parts of the province, but the problems are familiar: water that has seeped into garages and ground floors, thick mud in public buildings, and streets that need clearing before normal life can resume.
This week’s journey took the volunteers around ten hours, slowed by difficult conditions. That detail matters. It underlines the scale of the wider weather pattern hitting Spain right now, from rough seas and strong winds to repeated localised downpours.
AEMET warnings are still active in parts of the province
Granada’s clean-up is happening with one eye on the forecast. AEMET warnings for wind have been active for the Granada coast area, with gusts of around 70 km/h expected on Saturday, depending on the zone and timing.
That creates a familiar frustration for affected residents: you can’t properly dry out a home if the next front is already being tracked.
“They came for us. Now we go for them.”
A spokesperson for the Valencia group, Ana Isabel Martínez, said the reception in Granada’s villages was “incredible” — gratitude mixed with the kind of emotional relief that comes when help arrives from people who truly understand what flooding does to a family.
It’s also a reminder that disasters don’t only produce victims. They create networks.
Spain’s emergency services remain central to recovery. But stories like this show how quickly citizen-led support can mobilise — and why it often fills the gap between the moment a storm passes and the moment normality returns.