Who is Carmen Amoraga, the Picanya writer who put words to the pain of the DANA floods?

Carmen Amoraga was born in 1969 in Picanya. A graduate in information sciences from CEU San Pablo in Valencia, she won the 1997 Ateneo Joven Prize ("Para que nada se pierda"), then the 2014 Nadal Prize for "La vida era eso." She was director general of culture and heritage for the Generalitat Valenciana from 2015 to 2023.

On 29 October 2024, the DANA storm struck the Valencia region, and Picanya, her home town, was submerged. Amoraga spoke about it to El Español (15 December 2024): "Mucha gente lo compara con Lo imposible, pero lo que pasó con la DANA no fue la lluvia, fue la ola. Fue horrible" ("A lot of people compare it to The Impossible, but what happened with the DANA wasn't the rain, it was the wave. It was horrific"). On the forty-two minutes that submerged Picanya: "Éramos como zombis" ("We were like zombies").

On 5 January 2026, El Español announced "Lágrimas de barro" ("Tears of Mud"), co-written with Maxi Roldán, a collection of testimonies about the DANA. In it she says: "Hemos sido rotos entrevistando a otros rotos" ("We were broken people interviewing other broken people").

Photo credit: Fira del Llibre de València (2015), CC BY 3.0 licence, Wikimedia Commons.