Round Town: Local News Benidorm, Alfaz, Altea.

Benidorm´s famous Puig Campana Mountain where the rainwater came from.

The couple were on holiday in Benidorm and visiting the nearby market in Cala de Finestrat, the next cove along from Benidorm, one sunny Friday morning when a sudden rainstorm caused heavy rain from the mountains to come down through the old dry river bed where the market is held, into the sea, sweeping the entire market and the unfortunate couple with it.
The dry river bed has had tarmac  over and is used as the location for the weekly market. With hardly any warning, most of the market stalls were swept away together with their contents as the water gushed from the mountain in its hurried search for the sea.
It is understood that the British couple were dragged away in the current as water flowed through the market place, wrecking cars and stalls and trapping the couple amongst the tarpaulin used to cover the stalls. Their lifeless bodies were found trapped under a trailer after the flood, tangled in the debris as it entered the sea nearby.
It has now emerged that the town’s council was fined 83,000 euros for paving the ravine bed without permission last July. According to local reports, the authority was also discouraged from authorising vendors to sell their wares on the promenade and indeed a small plaque on the wall does advise passersby of the “possible danger of flooding when it rains”.
The catastrophe shocked the tourists and locals as the storm appeared form nowhere and there was little time to avoid the disaster but according to the locals “It was an accident waiting to happen”.

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Cala de Finestrat

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