Those over 40 in Malaga remember as a vital milestone the floods of 1989. Where we were when the sky fell on our heads and became night at noon. Arriving soaked to the grandmother's house, after Córdoba Street, where Antonio Banderas will inaugurate his theater with A Chorus Line , turned into a stream that covered our knees in minutes, without buses home. Not knowing anything about our father, who chose to sleep in the hospital, after, prudently, did not cross the river with a low car. No one talked about a weather emergency . They were terrible floods. It had happened before. Days without light, no schools, no telephone in some neighborhoods followed.

In 1907, the flood occurred. It was the most devastating, but the beginning of the century left us others in 1901, 1902, 1905. The one in 1907 was the worst, no doubt, when at one o'clock the bells of the Cathedral were warned. Days later, King Alfonso XIII and Antonio Maura would arrive , horrified by the catastrophic landscape. The planting of vines in the mountains was blamed, instead of having left the undergrowth found by the Catholic Monarchs. Without them I would not have had Malaga or wine, muscat or raisins to make it an important city. But they were partly right and the engineers reforested and built the Hole swamp. In 1989 it was another river, the Guadalhorce, which broke out . Later, it was channeled better.

It's being a September of torrential rains. It has happened before. It is what is born in the Mediterranean. In Florida, they know about hurricanes.

It may be that with the struggle of the Greta girl , with the choreography of applause from thousands of teenagers against climate change, we get cleaner seas, friendly cities and purer air. Welcome. Also, as Naturgy warns, the light will be more expensive, always for our grandchildren, if they exist, because the human pollutes and we have to produce less. But I trust those who, among all those children, study hard and become engineers to clean rivers, improve infrastructure or design air purifiers like those already installed in China. In those who follow the footprint of Martin Cooper , one of what helped invent the mobile phone, the device that would have saved us hours of anguish that November 1989. In children who, in addition to protesting, study mathematics to prevent natural damage . Modifying nature is how we have progressed. In hot and cooler ages.

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