A SECRET TECHNOLOGY that controls the weather; punishment for criticising Israel; a plot to redesign cities, and the fulfilment of a Netflix prediction: these are just some ways that conspiracy theorists are describing devastating flooding in Spain.

Claims like these, often seeking to put blame for the flooding on political elites or nearby countries, have accumulated many millions of views across TikTok, Telegram, Instagram, Facebook, and X.

Rescuers continue to search for bodies in Spain after its worst floods in decades, which have killed at least 218 people.

The devastating Mediterranean storm triggered surging torrents of muddy water that left a trail of destruction and an unknown number of missing people.

Around 17,000 security force and emergency services personnel are working to repair damaged infrastructure, distribute aid, and search for bodies in Spain’s largest peacetime deployment of its armed forces.

The polarisation of Spanish politics in recent years has compounded the problem, with the conservative-ruled eastern Valencia region and the left-wing national government sharing responsibility for crisis management while trading blame over the delays in alerting the population.

Many survivors are furious with the authorities for failing to provide urgent rescue and relief work. That anger reached breaking point on Sunday when crowds heckled and hurled mud at Spain’s King, Queen, and Prime Minister.

Spanish media reports that far-right groups are taking credit for the protests after neo-Nazi tattoos and emblems on clothes were photographed during disturbances.

Anger at the authorities could also be seen in conspiracy theories that claim that the rainfall was purposely unleashed, and have been viewed millions of times on social media sites. These posts include ones by an Irish user describing the rainfall as “weather manipulation” and “cloudseeding”.

Cloudseeding refers to a real technique where silver iodide (Agl), a harmless and naturally occurring substance, is released from aeroplanes in the hope of producing raindrops (though it is unclear whether this is effective).

These posts on Instagram have been seen more than 16,800 times and accumulated more than 1,000 likes since they were posted on 31 October, according to data provided by Meta.

Other claims squarely placed the blame on Morocco, which has used cloudseeding to try to control droughts, with commenters saying that their experiments somehow managed to cause the storms.

However, while Morocco is close to Spain, any aerosols from Morocco would have to pass hundreds of miles, over land and sea, before reaching Valencia on the Spanish eastern coast, far from Moroccan territory.

Rumours of weather manipulation on X have accumulated millions of views while a single video on TikTok alone has garnered more than 4.4 million views, according to metrics on those sites.

The TikTok video, which shows a very odd-looking ship said to be off the coast of Valencia, has an onscreen caption in Spanish that claims that it is a HAARP project that caused tornadoes on the land.

The ship pictured was actually a powership — a mobile power plant.

The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) was set up to study the topmost layer of the Earth’s atmosphere by the US Air Force; Navy; the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA); and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, which still runs it.

HAARP is frequently the subject of conspiracy theories that claim the project discovered how to control the weather and has used it as a secret weapon system responsible for numerous disasters around the world.

While the views on that one video claiming that the Valencia storms were man-made are staggering, they are not isolated. Other videos on TikTok featuring the same or very similar content also garnered hundreds of thousands of views each.

The claim was also shared by some high-profile users, such as the Spanish-Italian singer Miguel Bosé, who blamed the storms on “climate engineering, chemtrails, or HAARP” in a Facebook post seen more than 211,000 times, according to data provided by Meta.

Bosé came to prominence in Spanish-speaking fringe groups for sharing Covid-19 conspiracy theories during the pandemic.

His mention of “chemtrails” refers to a conspiracy theory that states that secretive powers are spraying people with nefarious substances through commercial aeroplane condensation trails.

Many versions of this theory have been debunked, though new iterations appear frequently.

The original chemtrail theories were spread in the United States in the 1990s and were often speculated to be about weather modification.

However, many also theorised that it was a government programme to test out poisons or deliver a chemical agent to their own populations — though, as experts have pointed out, dumping aerosolised chemicals kilometres from a target would be an incredibly ineffective, and remarkably visible, way of doing so.

However, some claims are even wilder.

A now-deleted tweet by a heavy X user that posts pro-Israeli commentary claimed that the flooding in Spain was “karma from heaven”. The user later apologised, though in doing so criticised the “Spanish leadership and their systemic bigotry towards Israel and Jews”.

Other posts with thousands of views also drew a connection to Israel, but instead claimed that the Israeli army or its allies had used a weather manipulation weapon to attack Spain.

On Facebook, a video showing flood devastation claims that “all of the cities and cars that are being destroyed and demolished off the map’s, around the world from geoengineering will be replaced with smart cities”.

That video was seen more than 634,000 times, according to data provided from Meta.

Other posts used these conspiracy theories to push cryptocurrencies, claiming that the floods were a sign that other currencies around the world would purposely be crashed.

A video was viewed thousands of time on TikTok argues that Netflix had foretold the floods through its TV series “Respira”, which also features a devastating storm in Valencia, as part of Predictive Programming.

Predictive Programming is the name of a conspiracy theory that claims that planned events are foreshadowed in popular culture by people who run the world.

While there is no evidence for this, believers theorise Predictive Programming is used to normalise these events, to brainwash the public, to gloat, to demonstrate power, or because doing so has mystical effects.

Contains reporting by AFP

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