Folks from all around the area turned out to catch sight of a ghost. The town of Aceredo was drowned at the bottom of the Alto Lindoso reservoir three decades ago. Prolonged drought has drained the reservoir, revealing the village just like it was back in 1992.
Ghost town appears
Of course, liberals are blaming global warming for the drought, but no matter what caused the lengthy dry spell hitting northwestern Spain, it raised the ghost of a village at the bottom of the lake.
Alto Lindoso reservoir is practically empty so the submerged town site emerged from the mud choked depths. The dam isn’t generating a whole lot of electricity now.
Visitors flocked to the edges of the high ground to catch a glimpse of the past. Some of the braver villagers headed on down into the ruins for some exploration and fascinating snapshots. Every once in a while, the roof tops have appeared as islands in the lake but this is the first time the whole ghost village has appeared.
Local resident Maximino Perez Romero says it’s “as if I’m watching a movie. I have a feeling of sadness. My feeling is that this is what will happen over the years due to drought and all that, with climate change.”
Locals are starting to get a little nervous because there hasn’t been even the ghost of a cloud overhead for a long while.
Without a drop of rain for two months, the “reservoir is currently at 15 per cent of its capacity.” The water shortage is “threatening to become worse.”
One third normal rain
Everyone knows that the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain but around Lindoso Reservoir, only around a third of what’s normal has been falling for a really long time. The last three months of 2021 only saw 35 percent of the rainfall they averaged “during the same period from 1981 to 2010.”
There’s been practically no rain at all yet this year. while “Roofs peeking out of the water have been a common sight every summer,” this is the first time the whole ghost town emerged.
On the first day of February, officials ordered the power generators shut down at Alto Lindoso and five other dams in the region. Along with the huge hit to the power grid, residents had to stop irrigating the fields. If the trend continues for long, there will be even more ghost villages around, above the water line.
One ministry source notes that “drought indicators showed a potential worsening in the coming weeks, but did not yet detect a generalized problem throughout the country.”
Rafael Monlina couldn’t wait to take his four-month-old son Marcos on a tour of the ghost town. One 72-year-old local, José Luis Penín, “used to stop at the bar in Aceredo after a long day of fishing.” He misses it.
“The whole place used to be all vineyards, orange trees. It was all green. It was beautiful.” Now it’s covered in mud. “Look at it now,” he continued, pointing at the cracked, yellow bed of the reservoir. “It’s so sad.“
