Heavy rains in Spain’s Barcelona amid search for flood victims in Valencia

Alerts issued in Barcelona area as the same storm system that caused devastating Valencia floods hovers over Spain.

The recurrent storms in eastern Spain that led to massive flooding last week and killed at least 217 people, mostly near Valencia, have dumped rain on Barcelona, prompting authorities to suspend commuter rail service.

Transport Minister Oscar Puente on Monday said he was suspending all commuter trains in northeastern Catalonia, a region with 8 million people, on request from civil protection officials.

Authorities in Barcelona warned of “extreme and continued rainfall” on the southern outskirts of the city, urging people to avoid any normally dry gorges or canals.

Puente said the rains forced air traffic controllers to change the course of 15 flights operating at Barcelona’s airport, located on the southern flank of the city. Several highways have also been closed.

Classes were cancelled in Tarragona, a city in southern Catalonia about halfway between Barcelona and Valencia, after a red alert for rains was issued.

Meanwhile, in Valencia, searches continued for bodies inside houses and thousands of wrecked cars strewn in the streets, on highways and in canals that channelled last week’s floods into populated areas.

Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said the authorities can still not give a reliable estimate of the people who are missing. Spanish national television RTVE broadcast pleas for help by several desperate people whose loved ones are unaccounted for.

In the Aldaia municipality, about 50 soldiers, police and firefighters, some wearing wetsuits, searched in a huge shopping centre’s underground car park for potential victims. Police spokesman Ricardo Gutierrez told reporters that so far about 50 vehicles had been found and no bodies had been discovered there.

Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego said some districts in Valencia received about 20 months of rainfall in about eight hours. She said residents at many places were forced to clean up the streets themselves.

“You are seeing today [Monday] more presence of civil guards, of military personnel, helping out with that,” she said from Chiva, a town just west of Valencia. “But really, when we were here a couple of days ago, we saw the bulk of the work being done by the community itself.”

The army sent about 5,000 soldiers over the weekend to help distribute food and water, clean up streets and guard against looters. A further 2,500 would join them, Defence Minister Margarita Robles told state-owned radio RNE on Monday.

Locals criticised late alerts from authorities about the dangers of the storm and a perceived delayed response by emergency services.

On Sunday, some residents in Paiporta slung mud and insults at Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, King Felipe and Queen Letizia, chanting: “Murderers, murderers!” Some people protesting against Sanchez wore clothing with the symbols of far-right organisations.

Climate scientists and meteorologists said the immediate cause of the flooding was a low-pressure storm system that migrated from an unusually wavy and stalled jet stream likely fuelled by a record-hot Mediterranean Sea. That system simply parked itself over the region and unleashed a deluge.