The Night the Sky Opened

Spain had suffered through a dry, hot summer. Last week, as Barcelona's 1,750,000 people celebrated the Festival of Our Lady of Mercy, the agonizing drought ended. There was a promising thunderclap and as the winds rose, the city's lights failed; in darkness, Barcelonians climbed to the roofs of their houses to welcome the rain. But soon, as one woman put it, "the water turned into a monster."

Barcelona was in the path of a tornado. As the sky opened, every sun-baked gulch became a torrent. The dust-dry beds of the rivers on either side of Barcelona carried floods 75 ft. wide. Debris piled up against bridges and then the bridges plunged downstream. A 6-ft. wall of water smashed into the crowded industrial suburbs and carried all before it: hundreds of rubble-brick houses, telephone poles, autos. horses and wagons, people. Sixteen gypsies encamped under a bridge were swept clean away.

By dawn, the Barcelona area looked as if it had been sacked. Corpses floated along the beaches. Thousands were homeless, and much of Barcelona's hard-worked industry lay in ruins. The tornado's human toll: 500 dead, 400 missing.

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