The tragedy that left over 200 people dead has sparked a deluge of disinformation, including claims that the extreme weather was artificially engineered.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00How conspiracies about Spain's floods spread online.
00:08Weeks after devastating flash floods claimed at least 200 lives in Spain, conspiracy theories
00:14continue to run rampant online.
00:18Social media users have falsely speculated that the tragedy was intentionally provoked
00:24and not a natural disaster, despite the Spanish weather agency warning four days in advance
00:31that the torrential rain was on its way.
00:33These videos circulating online claim that vessels spotted off the Valencian coast artificially
00:40altered the weather with high-frequency transmitters, causing excessive rainfall.
00:46They are falsely described as HAARP ships, referring to the Alaska-based HAARP program
00:51that studies the upper layer of the Earth's atmosphere, but which cannot control or interfere
00:57with the weather.
00:58The ship in question in these videos is in fact a floating power plant called the Karadeniz
01:04Powership Osman Khan, owned by Turkish firm Car Powership.
01:09We trace back the footage to this promotional video published by the company in 2017.
01:16News agency AFP verified the ship's position and found that it has been stationed in Ghana
01:21since 2019.
01:24There is no evidence that it was seen near Valencia.
01:27Yet we found posts spreading this theory in at least six languages and often left unverified
01:33by the platforms.
01:35Other social media users have spread unfound claims that Morocco used these ships to cause
01:41the storm and destroy Spanish agricultural harvests in order to ship more Moroccan produce
01:47into Europe.
01:48This is just one example in a whole playbook of conspiracies that have been spreading since
01:54the tragedy.