Mark of the 1907 flood
The 24th of September is a date deeply ingrained in the communal memory of Malagueños, marking one of the city's massive floods
The flood of 1907 has left its mark at 15 Carretería street, visible on the right entrance frame. Here you can see the mark stating: “Flood 24th Sept-1907”. It's a grim reminder of the terrible flood of the Guadalmedina river. Astonishingly, the city hadn't even seen rain when an avalanche of water and mud from the Guadalmedina basin, where there had been heavy rain, engulfed Málaga around 1 in the morning.
The wall of water, mud and silt initially took down the old Puente de La Aurora, which clogged the water flow when it got jammed at the Santo Domingo bridge. This structure too, eventually collapsed, repeating the pattern at the Tetuan Bridge further downstream. However, this one resisted the onslaught, unlike the subsequent railway bridge, which was also swept away. The sudden surge in water flow led to the river overflowing, swiftly inundating the neighbourhoods of El Perchel and La Trinidad and many other low-lying areas of the city.
One of the greatest disasters to hit the city in the 20th century
The catastrophe claimed the lives of 21 people through drowning, with many others injured. The waters reached as high as five metres, and according to witnesses, the quantity of mud and debris was such that people could enter some houses through the balconies. Material damage was estimated at around five and a half million pesetas of the era, with a full two months needed to fully clean the streets.
This tragedy is remembered by these marks, also by a plaque inside the Church of San Juan, and another in Ciudad Jardin at a ground-floor house on Emilio Thuillier street, number 120. There used to be another plaque on Ollerías street which has been removed. The plaque, which was located at the corner of Calle Ollerías and Calle Carretería, where the Banco Hispano Americano was later built, read:
24th Septiember 1907 terrible flood in this city, with the waters reaching the height marked by the strip indicated below in this house —————————
In the wake of this flood, Germany lent a hand in the reconstruction of the city's bridges as a way of returning the favour when the people of Málaga helped to save the shipwrecked crew of the Gneisenau some years earlier. The Puente de los Alemanes (Bridge of the Germans) was built thanks to the cooperation of the German government.
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