Spain flooding latest: Emergency teams race to find Spanish flood survivors as debris cuts off communities

“Our thoughts are with the victims of the floods in Spain, their families and the rescue teams,” it says in a post on X.

“The floods in Spain are not only a national tragedy. It’s also a European one.”

Roberta Metsola, president of the European Parliament, adds that Europe mourns “all those who lost their lives during the tragic floods.

“We will face this together,” she says.

We’ve been hearing from local residents of Sedavi, in Valencia, where roads are blocked with mud and piled up vehicles.

Eliú Sánchez says at one point he saw a young man being swept away by the water: “He was on top of a car, it looked like he tried to jump into another car but he was carried away.

“I have been told people were clinging to trees, but the force made them let go and they were carried away, calling for help”.

Another resident, Julian Ormeño, says he doesn’t feel the authorities have done enough to help.

“I haven’t seen the police, nor the mayor, nor anyone else – no one has come to show their face,” he says. “They raised the alarm when the water was already here. It was no longer necessary for them to tell me that the flood was coming.”

• For context: There has been some anger from locals and officials that the flood warnings came too late. The flooding hit Valencia and the southern Spain region overnight into Wednesday following heavy rainfall.

Various bits of video from yesterday show the damage done to communities in the city of Valencia, where the large majority of the 95 people known to have died were killed.

From rescue efforts to flooded roads and huge piles of cars, here’s some of the footage:

That’s the question climatologist Friederike Otto has been answering on Radio 4’s Today programme – here’s a snapshot of what she was saying.

“Of course there have been floods before and also other extreme weather events – but what we see in more recent years, ever stronger, is that many of these extreme weather events are more intense than they would have been without climate change.”

Otto says there have been a lot of floods this year, similar to the ones we’re now seeing in Spain, where “a lot of rain comes down in a relatively short time which makes it hard for people to get out of harm’s way”. She goes on to say that climate change adds extra water, sometimes between 10 to 20%, to these flooding events and “that can make a huge difference in terms of damages”.

“We know from very basic physics that a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapour, and that needs to get out of the atmosphere and it does that in particularly heavy bursts of rainfall.”

Image source, EPA

Spain has been coming to terms with the deadly impact of the flash flooding that ravaged southern communities over the past 24 hours.

The last update from Valencian authorities at 19:30 CET (18:30 GMT) put the death toll in the region at 92, with another two people killed in the neighbouring region of Castilla-La Mancha.

A 71-year-old British man also died hours after being rescued from his home in Alhaurin de la Torre, in Malaga, according to Andalusia’s regional leader.

Our correspondent Nicky Schiller has only just landed in Valencia and says the rain has receded, but earlier Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez urged residents in the area, as well as in Andalusia and Catalonia, to remain cautious as red and orange weather warnings remain in place across large swathes of the territory.

Territorial policy minister Ángel Víctor Torres said it was still unclear how many people were missing after more than a year’s worth of rain fell in southern Spain in barely eight hours on Tuesday.

And as King Felipe VI spoke of the “enormous destruction” the flooding caused, Torres announced Spain will observe three days of mourning from tomorrow until Sunday. In the meantime, search and rescue operations will continue.

We’ll be ending our coverage of the flooding in Spain shortly but you can read more on how the events unravelled in our story here and our Europe reporter Laura Gozzi has brought together testimonies from people affected by the flooding.

You can also learn more about the weather phenomenon that caused the flash flooding in our handy video explainer.

Earlier today, the region of Catalonia, in the north east of Spain, was placed under maximum alert as the heavy rains causing flooding in the Valencia region moved northwards.

Catalonian Interior Minister Nuria Parlon now says they are ruling out activating the emergency flood plan.

Speaking in a press conference, she confirms schools will be open tomorrow.

“The forecasts we have now do not make us think that we have to protect ourselves against a flood like the one that has unfortunately happened in Valencia,” Parlon adds.

Image source, EPA

Insurance analysts in Spain predict that the floods seen Wednesday will mark the most expensive natural disaster to ever hit the country, Spanish outlet El País is reporting.

Flooding in Biscay in 1983 was previously the most expensive. At that time, floods swept through the area of Bilbao and nearby municipalities, external, killing 34 people. Insurance payments for the disaster hit €977m (£818m), adjusted for inflation.

“It was tremendous, with rainfall that had not been seen in 500 years, but what has happened in Valencia could be even worse,” Pilar González de Frutos, the technical assistant director of operations for the Insurance Compensation Consortium at the time of the Biscay disaster, tells the outlet.

There is a crucial difference between Valencia and Biscay this time around: In 2024, Spain drives more cars, meaning the shock to car insurers could be significantly higher.

People affected by the floods in Valencia have been speaking to the BBC OS programme about their experiences.

Antonio, in La Torre, tells us: “I heard strange noises outside coming from the street and when I looked out I saw the street had turned into a river. […] I couldn’t believe it because it wasn’t even raining”.

Later he “saw cars floating in the water” and “the water broke through some walls”. He says he was safe but some of his “friends have lost their houses” and “don’t know where people are”.

Serena, in Gandia, says “many of my friends are stuck in the city, unable to return to their villages, some of them not knowing if their relatives and friends are alive or dead”.

In her town, she says “the roads have been completely destroyed”, and that the supermarkets are empty with “not enough bottled water for everyone”.

Laura Gozzi
Europe reporter

In hard-hit Paiporta, residents have described seeing water rush forward “like a tsunami.”

Water rushed across motorways, stranding one 21-year-old Paiporta resident and his parents on a bridge.

“We saw two cars being swept away by the current and we don’t know if there were people inside,” another man told Las Provincias. “We’d never seen anything like it.”

Warnings to the public about the threat of a flood were delayed, some critics have say: alerts arrived more than 12 hours after warnings were issued by Spain’s meteorological agency.

• ‘Like a tsunami’:Spaniards recount horror of deadly floods

We can now bring you new images showing the level of destruction that heavy rainfall has brought to Spain.

Photos show debris strewn across roads. Cars swept away by the rain water can be seen piled high in roadways.

Image source, EPA

Image source, Reuters

Image source, EPA

Earlier we told you a number of heads of state have offered support to Spain. More European leaders have since joined in offering their support to the flood-hit communities.

Emmanuel Macron expressed his “solidarity” with those affected and guaranteed France’s “availability” to assist with relief operations.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni echoed the French president saying her thoughts are “with the families of the victims”.

Austria chancellor Karl Nehammer, whose country was rocked by flooding only last month, wrote on X: “Our thoughts and our solidarity go out to the Spanish people and the emergency services who are working around the clock.”

The Spanish Securities and Emergencies department has issued weather warnings across much of the country.

In Castellón, Valencia and Alicante, residents are under both yellow and red rain warnings. Valencia is under a red alert through much of the state.

A red warning precedes extreme or unusual weather events and is the departments most extreme alert. Yellow warnings indicate lower-risk weather.

The number of people killed in these flash floods has just risen to 95.

Some 92 of those deaths were recorded in Valencia alone.

A further two deaths were in Castilla-La Mancha and the other was in Malaga – the 71-year-old British man who we mentioned in our last post and whose death was reported by the Andalusian government’s president.

A 71-year-old British man has died in hospital hours after being rescued from his home on the outskirts of Alhaurin de la Torre, in Malaga, the president of the Andalusian government says.

Juanma Moreno, in a post on X, external, says the man was “suffering from hypothermia” and died following several cardiac arrests.

We’ve largely been following the flooding in Valencia today but other areas of southern Spain, including Malaga, were also hit with heavy rainfall and subsequently flooding.

The official number of people killed by the floods still stands at 72.