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The Ribadelago disaster

Galende, Sanabria, Zamora

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The Ribadelago disaster

Historical milestone · Galende, Sanabria, Zamora

Image of Galende, not of the place itself.

In the early hours of 9 January 1959, more than one hundred and fifty metres of the Vega de Tera dam collapsed and eight million cubic metres of water swept away the village: 144 of its 532 residents died. It is remembered as one of the most devastating dam-failure disasters in Spain's history, and it triggered a major movement of solidarity with the victims at national and international level. Eleven months later, on 2 December 1959, the Malpasset dam disaster occurred at Fréjus, France, with 421 deaths, and years later, in 1963, a landslide at Italy's Vajont dam caused a megatsunami that killed around 2,000 people.

9 de enero de 1959

Photo: M.Peinado from Alcalá de Henares, España (CC BY 2.0)

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