From a HAARP meteorological attack to the destruction of dams: the misinformation about the DANA in Valencia that has crossed borders

Conspiracy theories with claims that the DANA phenomenon (a Spanish acronym for high-altitude isolated depression, a weather phenomenon that recently caused serious flooding in Valencia) was caused by a weather manipulation attack , as well as misinformation about alleged destruction of dams in the region, have travelled from Spain to Sweden, even crossing the Atlantic to Mexico and Argentina.

The Karadeniz Powership Onur Sultan is a floating power station that passed through Las Palmas de Gran Canaria last September, and not a ship from which a “HAARP meteorological attack” was launched that caused the floods in Valencia in October. However, it has been the protagonist of one of the most widely circulated hoaxes internationally about the DANA in Valencia and its consequences, which has subsequently gone viral. in countries such as Croatia, Mexico, Greece, Italy, the United Kingdom and France.

A map of blue dots of supposedly demolished dams in Valencia has also been widely shared in other countries, but in reality the real image indicates the opposite: they are river barriers that do exist, compiled by a European project. This content has spread from Sweden, via the United Kingdom and Belgium.  In the first two, members of their respective parliaments have also been involved in sharing it on social media.

Examples of disinformation about the passage of the DANA through Valencia that have circulated in The HAARP conspiracy theory and the ship that supposedly modified the weather and caused the DANA in Valencia

The HAARP conspiracy theory and the ship that supposedly modified the weather and caused the DANA in Valencia

One of the first conspiracy theories to emerge after DANA is an old one: that of alleged climate attacks generated by the HAARP project , which has no scientific evidence.

Examples of how the HAARP conspiracy theory has been spread

HAARP stands for High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, a radio transmission system that investigates the ionosphere, an upper layer of the Earth's atmosphere. Although it moves as if it were a weather modification system, it has no capacity to affect the climate or the weather because its signal does not affect the lower layers of the atmosphere, which is where meteorological phenomena originate, and such a system would need much more energy to be able to wield such an influence, according to several experts. This narrative has provided the foundation for one of the hoaxes relating to the DANA  that has been most widely shared across borders and that has been debunked by the most verifiers internationally.

The most viral one carries the image of the floating power plant called Karadeniz Powership Onur Sultan. Owned by the company Karpowership , it was built in 1999 and sails under the flag of Liberia. The disinformation content points to it as the culprit of the passage of the DANA along the Mediterranean coast. “This ship full of antennas entered Valencia on Wednesday. #HAARP” says a video that is circulating, claiming that the ship was on the Valencian coast before the floods caused by the DANA in October 2024 .

The publications claim that the ship is part of the HAARP project, which they accuse of being responsible for the torrential rains and floods in Valencia. It has gone viral in Croatia, Romania and Ireland . But the video they refer to, a video of a ship “full of antennas”, was published on September 25, a month before the first warnings of the arrival of the DANA and is located in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria , not in Valencia. In addition, the ship that appears in the recording is a floating power station and is not related to the HAARP system.

On other occasions, a photo of the same ship has been circulating, this time off the coast of Turkey, launching the same accusations. “This is the ship with the #HAARP antennas to generate bursts of rain-laden clouds, they launch the electromagnetic pulse not to stimulate but to burst an exponential and uncontrolled fall of rain over cities,” said a user who shared a video of the ship recorded in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2017. As Chequeado , a fact-checker from Argentina, one country where the hoax circulated, explained: the video is not current, nor was it recorded in Spain, nor is the ship related to the HAARP program. Moreover, the HAARP program does not have the capacity to cause rain or other meteorological phenomena and such claims are part of a conspiracy narrative.

Other viral content points to another conspiracy: that of a climate attack by Morocco “on its Spanish competitors”, in the case of “Valencia oranges and El Ejido greenhouses”. It has spread to countries such as Germany , but also to Spain. Again they use the conspiracy theory of “weather modification technology” through “HAARP antennas”. But, once again: there is no scientific evidence for this, and the AEMET had already warned of the arrival of the DANA in the Mediterranean several days before.

Dam demolition and the AMBER project map hoax: disinformation spread across Europe

“Since time immemorial, our ancestors built dams to protect settlements and make it possible to cultivate the land. In recent years, the idea that ' nature must be restored ' has spread, meaning that dams that slow down the advance of water have been removed.” This text was shared on X (formerly Twitter) by Magnus Jacobsson, member of the Christian Democratic Party of Sweden and a member of parliament in the Nordic country. Along with this message there was a photo of a map of the Valencian Community with blue dots.

Examples of various disinformation about the map and the alleged removal of dams that have circulated in various countries

According to the circulating content, “the blue dots are dams that have been dismantled.” However, the blue dots actually refer to the opposite: they are existing river barriers (of all kinds, large and small, and all in operation) collected by the European AMBER project (acronym in English for Adaptive Management of Barriers in European Rivers). In addition, as we have explained in Maldita.es, in the province of Valencia no large dam or reservoir has been demolished since 2000. Only at least seven small river barriers have been demolished. We have also debunked the disinformation narrative that Pedro Sánchez’s Spanish Government has destroyed large dams that have made the damage of the DANA in Valencia much greater: there is no record of any dam, reservoir or weir having been demolished between the years 2018 and 2024 in the area affected by the DANA in Valencia during the Sánchez Government.

In the UK, fellow MP Richard Tice, a member of the Reform Party led by Nigel Farage, pushed this disinformation narrative, blaming the EU for the Valencia floods by claiming they forced the Spanish government to demolish dams. “The Spanish floods… Could absurd EU rules have made things worse?” X’s post reads.

Post shared on X by British MP Richard Tice

However, as already explained, neither reservoirs nor large dams have been destroyed in the Júcar river basin, the most affected by the floods and which includes the province of Valencia. Only small river barriers have been destroyed: structures that interrupt the flow of rivers and which are mostly weirs and small dams that have become obsolete or are no longer in use. These structures do not retain water, as a reservoir does, but rather raise the water table and divert the flow to other places to, for example, facilitate the irrigation of nearby plots.

The European Commission document hoax and the alleged fumigations: in reality, a parliamentary question from a former MEP

An alleged EU document has also become the subject of disinformation about Valencia. In the Netherlands, among others places where the hoax circulated, the content said that “four employees of the Spanish Meteorological Agency (AEMET) have confessed that Spain is being fumigated nationwide by planes that spread lead dioxide, silver iodide and diatoms throughout the atmosphere” and that “the autonomous communities of Murcia and Valencia and the province of Almería are the most affected, to the point that there has not been a drop in more than seven months, catastrophic cold drop storms and respiratory diseases among the population are caused by the inhalation of lead dioxide and other toxic substances ,” says a Facebook user .

Misinformation about the alleged letter from the European Commission and the report on fumigations

Factcheck Nederland, the AFP verification team in the Netherlands that has verified the content, explains that both AEMET and the European Commission have denied the existence of the report in the past and the document to which the content refers, the alleged report of the European Commission, is actually a document of parliamentary questions by former MEP Ramón Tremosa (Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya, Catalan European Democratic Party), raised in 2015. The Commission's response was that it did not receive any report from the supposed Spanish meteorologists asking that it take a position on the matter and that it investigated the matter with the Spanish authorities and has since found no evidence of the accusations of a military geoengineering plan to change the climate in Spain. Misinformation similar to this was also debunked by Ellinika Hoaxes, in Greece, a country where the content also went viral.

The conspiracy theory that chemtrails provoked the DANA also circulated in Spain. On social networks, a video has circulated in which a person shows aerial shots of the situation in the Valencian Community during the DANA and says that it has been caused by chemtrails. This is another conspiracy theory that we have already repeatedly denied in Maldita.es that suggests that aeroplanes are used to release chemical compounds into the atmosphere with the aim of, among other things, modifying the climate.

The hoax about the king's entourage in Valencia spread and amplified by Russian channels and websites

In recent days, we have also seen this video, which went viral in Spain and other countries,  showing a long line of police cars with the claim that it was “the king's entourage” on his visit to Valencia. Maldita.es already explained that the video is real and was taken on the same day of the visit of the king of Spain and the president of the Government to Paiporta, ground zero of the DANA, as well as other affected areas on November 3. However, it is a hoax that the long line of cars is from the escorts of the head of state or the president of the Government, it is “the initiation of service of the Agents of the Municipal Police of Madrid” who are collaborating in Valencia, as explained by the body to Maldita.es and shared by themselves on their social networks .

Disinformation about the alleged King's entourage in Valencia, spread by Russian websites and Telegram channels in several languages

Disinformation has been widely spread by Russian websites and Telegram channels, both in Russian and Arabic . Such strategies, which describe “a pattern of mostly non-illegal behaviour that threatens or has the potential to negatively affect political values, procedures and processes”, are what the European External Action Service (EEAS) calls Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI). The strategies of disinformation campaigns coordinated and disseminated by Russian websites and channels are often repeated: they mainly consist of publishing disinformation simultaneously in several countries and languages, as has been the case with several campaigns analysed by the European External Action Service (EEAS).

It has also been shared in other languages such as Italian , French or English , taking advantage of the fact that the altercations during the visit of Felipe VI and Queen Letizia, the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and Carlos Mazón, president of the Generalitat Valenciana, occurred on the same day in which the Madrid Police made the tour of the streets of Valencia before beginning to provide service and assistance to their counterparts in that town.

Videos taken out of context and recurring disinformation about “this was already predicted” in a Netflix series

If in other disinformation crises it was the Simpsons who had supposedly predicted situations such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine or the assault on the United States Capitol, something that was not true, after the arrival of the DANA in Valencia, similar content has gone viral but with another series as the focus: 'Respira', from Netflix. It has circulated, in addition to Spanish, in Italian , Turkish , English , Portuguese or French. The episode, entitled "Gota Fría", tells the story of the passage of a DANA through Valencia, which is flooded at several points, and how the emergency falls on the hospital due to the number of injured and the limitation of resources. The series began filming in October 2023.

Disinformation in several languages ​​about the fact that the Respira series predicted the Valencia catastrophe and the “negative primacy” that says that catastrophes like the current one are part of an “elite plan”

These contents are based on the “negative primacy” conspiracy theory (which we have already covered in Maldita.es) which claims that catastrophes like the current one are part of a “plan of the elites”, which they transmit to the rest of the population, in a covert way, through fictional content. As in this case, in which they talk about the DANA of 2024, they never present evidence or explanations that could validate the theories.

It is also very common in emergency situations to share videos and photos taken in another place or in another year. This is what happened with a video showing how people get into cars on a flooded street, which was actually recorded in Zaragoza in 2023 but it has gone viral with messages that indicate it was recorded in Valencia during the passage of the DANA and the subsequent floods. It has been verified in countries such as Mexico, Greece, Portugal and even India.

Emergency situations are conducive to the appearance of hoaxes. At Maldita.es we have continued to debunk hoaxes and misinformation related to the DANA and various conspiracy theories since last Tuesday, October 29. It is crucial to remember: trust only official sources and, if in doubt, it is preferable not to share it . Here you can consult tools and sources to inform you about the DANA and its consequences that has swept through Spain.

This article was made possible thanks to the collaboration of fact-checking organizations such as AFP Factuel (France) and AFP FactCheck Nederland (Netherlands), FACTA (Italy), Faktograf (Croatia), Greece FactCheck (Greece), Ellinika Hoaxes (Greece), Animal Político (Mexico), Factual.ro (Romania), Full Fact (United Kingdom), Les Surligneurs (France), Polígrafo (Portugal), factcheck vlaanderen (Belgium), Logically Facts (Ireland), Fact Crescendo (India), FactCheck.bg (Bulgaria), Knack (Belgium), RE:Check (Latvia), dpa , Correctiv (Germany), Faktoje (Albania).