Of all the tragedies that can be told of this Tuesday, raging with wind, rain and snow, none are like that of the Delta de l'Ebre, which has suffered truly irreversible damage with the sea surging inland several kilometres to devastate fields and rice paddies and create a Dantesque and unrecognizable landscape. Who knows what can be recovered? Never did the lyrics of Raimon's song ring so true - "In my country the rain doesn't know how to rain" - and thus we have seen unprecedented images of Tossa de Mar; terrifying rises of the Onyar and Daró rivers to the point of threatening to breach their banks; damage on numerous beaches that have, in fact, disappeared; the motorway to France closed for several hours; severed rail and highway connections and a long series of problems in a great number of Catalan towns.
The storm they have called Glòria will be leaving us at around midday Wednesday when the overall picture is looking so bleak that serious thought will have to be given to declaring a disaster zone to alleviate the economic catastrophe produced and to turn around real emergencies like that of the river Ebre's delta as quickly as possible, which is, without a doubt, my main concern at the time of writing this article. There will be time ahead to analyze the list of affected areas in more detail, but it will be the Catalan government's obligation to ensure that aid to each and every one of them is not delayed.
But in addition to the tragedy, it is worth noting some positive things that have happened: from the weather forecasts which this time have been completely accurate - one example of all this is the clear and detailed predictions which El Nacional's expert, Xavi Freixes, has been providing constantly since the weekend - to an exemplary coordination of all the emergency services in Catalonia - firefighters, medical personnel, Mossos d'Esquadra and municipal police, in the first place - also including specific, useful information from the Catalan interior ministry with continual press appearances. Insistently-repeated service information that probably prevented more than one problem and meant that at many moments of the day the affected areas looked deserted, because people took refuge in their homes.
It is worth noting this as a contrast to what happened recently after the disastrous explosion in the petrochemical installations of Tarragona, where many things could have been done better, starting with the sirens that failed to sound and left the locals without information during a critical period. Such has not been the case on this latest occasion and that needs to be admitted.