A 22-year-old American student from California was found at the bottom of Madrid’s Rio Manzanares. The lad had been missing a couple of days, with family and friends searching the area after he failed to appear after a night out – one discotheque doorman had turned him away because he claimed he was drunk.

The initial forensic report puts his death down to an accident as there were no signs of violence on the body, but a final verdict is pending a complete autopsy in search of any substances other than alcohol in his organs.

The family find it difficult to believe that Austin Tayor Bice, who had been studying Finance at the Universidad de Carlos III as an exchange student, had drowned as he was very athletic.

Criticism over the alleged lack of safety of the riverbanks was immediately made because in places the safety fences are totally inadequate: flatiron posts with a top and bottom flatiron bars, leaving a square-metre gap between them. Furthermore, the lower bar is at the height of a toddlers waste.

Anybody who does fall in would find it impossible to get out, as the river is little more than a canal with vertical, concrete sides in places. Conscious of this deficit, the City Hall has been filling the gaps with mesh-work fencing with completion set for the 15th of March – too late for Austin, however.