The residents of Malaga's El Palo district lived through a particularly unsettling night of heavy rainfall by Storm Adam.
“It was horrific. It ... was absolutely terrifying - the windows were shaking with the thunder and the sky just kept lighting up,” said Antonia, her heart still in her mouth. For her, the night was a real ordeal that she could only ease with "a little pill for my nerves" to try and get some much-needed sleep.
"I’ve never seen a flood like that round here. The only good thing, if you can call it that, is that the water was following its natural course and rushing straight out to sea, but nobody can take that fear away from you."
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On the streets and promenades, there is a constant stream of locals coming and going. Many are walking purposefully towards the shore or the mouth of the stream to assess the damage first-hand. This is the case with Vicente, who, as soon as he got up, wanted to head down to the beach.
“We’ve been through many storms, but none like this. The others haven’t been nearly as strong,” he explained as he surveyed the state the coastline has been left in.
“Fortunately, everyone in the family is fine. The first thing I did was ring my children to make sure they were all right. Now I had to go down to the beach to see how much the river had receded and what damage it had caused,” he added.
There were also those who were caught out by the storm while at work. Francisco was rushing through the final minutes of his shift at the restaurant where he works when the heavens opened over the neighbourhood. “I was just finishing tidying up, with everything ready for me to go home, when I was caught in a downpour like you wouldn’t believe,” he said.
“I had to walk home because I live about 20 minutes’ walk away, and I arrived home soaking wet from head to toe. A massive storm with thunder and lightning… it was absolutely terrifying,” said Francisco, who added “I’ve never experienced rain like that in my whole life.”
Half a metre of water and in the dark
“I live up in the area around Miraflores, and to be honest, the water rose to a level of half a metre, which is still marked on the façade,” said another resident with concern. He has lived in the eastern part of Malaga for nearly eight decades, but Saturday night’s events surpassed anything he could recall: "I’m nearly 80 years old and I’ve never in my life seen it rain like this in El Palo. To make matters worse, the power went out at about half past eleven at night and we’ve been in the dark until I woke up this morning. It’s been a thoroughly unsettling night, filled with worry about what might happen.”
Despite the scare and the mud - which, as the local residents pointed out, the cleaning services have been working hard to clear away since early this morning - the most important thing is that no one has come to any harm.