Valencia Floods: We’re All Valencians Now

I'm standing on the beach, but the beach is gone. Instead of miles of white sand and clear blue Mediterranean waters, there are now massive piles of debris stretching along the coast, fading into the horizon.

The debris is stacked high in mounds, separated by lower stretches of rubble. It looks like the city bulldozers, usually here at dawn to smooth the sand, came early to build a grim mountain range of broken things.

I walk up to the first pile, hardly believing it.