A persistent snowstorm covered large parts of Spain on Saturday with an extraordinary amount of snow. At least four people were killed and thousands were trapped in cars or at train stations and airports that suspended all services.
The national weather agency reported that the snowfall in Madrid from 7 o’clock reached an unseen level within half a century. According to the weather agency AEMET, more than 20 centimeters of snow fell in the Spanish capital.
The bodies of a man and a woman were recovered by the emergency service in the Andalusian region after their car was washed away by a flooded river near the city of Fuengirola. The Interior Ministry said a 54-year-old man was also found dead in Madrid under a large pile of snow. The local police department has killed a homeless man suffering from hypothermia in the northern city of Zaragoza.
More than half of Spain’s provinces remained under storm warnings for Storm Filomena on Saturday night, seven of them at the highest warning level. In Madrid, for the first time since the system was adopted four decades ago, the authorities issued a red alert and called on the army to rescue people from vehicles trapped on everything from small roads to the main roads in the city.
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Sandra Morena, who was trapped late Friday when she commuted to her night shift as a security guard in a mall, arrived at the house on foot after an emergency unit from the army helped her Saturday morning.
“It usually takes me 15 minutes, but this time it froze for 12 hours, without food or water, and I cried with other people because we did not know how we would get there,” said Morena, 22.
“Snow can be very nice, but it’s not nice to be trapped in a car at night,” she added.
As of Saturday night, Spanish security services had rescued all those trapped in vehicles – more than 1,500, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said.
AEMET warned that some regions would experience more than 24 hours of continuous snowfall due to the strange combination of a cold mass of air stationary over the Iberian Peninsula and the arrival of the warmer Storm Filomena from the south.
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The storm is expected to be followed in the coming days by a severe drop in temperature, the agency said.
Transport Minister José Luis Ábalos warned that “snow will turn to ice and we will enter a situation that is perhaps more dangerous than we currently have.”
He added that it is most important to assist the needy, but also to ensure the supply chain of food and other basic goods.
“The storm surpassed the pessimistic predictions we had,” Ábalos added.
Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas International Airport, the main gateway to and from Spain, will remain closed at least until Sunday, Ábalos said after the snowstorm donated machines and workers to keep the runways clean.
All trains to and from Madrid, commuter routes and long-distance passenger trains, as well as railways between the south and northeast of the country, have been suspended, Renfe said.
According to Spanish transit authorities, the storm caused serious disruptions or closed more than 650 roads, urging people to stay indoors and avoid all unnecessary travel.
More than 100 roads were still impassable almost 24 hours after the storm began to pour snow in the central part of the country.
The Spanish government plans to take extra steps to ensure that the country’s weekly shipment of the BioNTech-Pfizer coronavirus vaccine can be distributed to local health authorities on Monday by police-led convoys, the interior minister said.
The winter weather disrupted the country’s soccer league, and some teams could not travel for matches. Saturday’s match between Spanish league leader Atlético Madrid and Athletic Bilbao was postponed after the plane with Bilbao’s team was unable to land in the capital on Friday and had to turn around.
The regions of Castilla La Mancha and Madrid, where a total of 8.6 million people live, have announced that schools will be closed at least Monday and Tuesday.
Despite the numerous branches and even entire trees overturned by the weight of the snow, the blizzard also produced surrealistic images that entertained many Madrileños, including some brave skiers and a man on a dog sled seen on videos which is widely circulated on social media.
Lucía Vallés, a coach of a ski club in Madrid, who usually has to travel to distant mountains with her clients, was delighted to see the white layers of snow literally pile up in front of her door.
“I never imagined it, it was a gift,” the 23-year-old said. “But never before have so many photos been taken of me,” she adds as she slides next to the late 18th-century building where the Prado Museum is housed.