Spaniards talk about the horror of deadly floods

“When the water started to rise, it became a wave,” said Guillermo Serrano Perez. “It was like a tsunami.”

The 21-year-old from Paiporta, near Valencia, is one of thousands of people affected by Tuesday night’s flash floods, which covered the region and killed more than 70 people.

He was driving along the highway with his parents Tuesday night when the water came flooding in. They survived by climbing the bridge and throwing their car into the water.

Although heavy rain fell in the region for several hours, many like Guillermo Serrano Pérez and his family were caught off guard by the force of the flood.

But the signs were there.

At around 07:00 (06:00 GMT) on Tuesday morning, Spain’s meteorological agency Aemet warned that heavy rain was expected in the Valencia region.

“Be very careful! The danger is extreme! Do not travel unless absolutely necessary,” the message on X said, before declaring “maximum red alert”.

More alerts were issued throughout the day, warning local authorities to keep people away from the river’s banks.

At 3:20 p.m., the regional emergency coordination center was already posting images of heavily flooded streets in the municipalities of La Fuente and Utiel, west of Valencia.

Hours later, it said several rivers in the area had burst their banks and urged people to stay away from their banks.

But in most places it was already too late.

Chiva, about 20 km away, was one of the first to feel the full fury of the flash flood.

A deep ravine that cuts through the city has reportedly filled with water since Tuesday afternoon following heavy rains.

By 6:00 p.m., the streets of the city had turned into raging rivers, the water forcefully dragging cars, streetlights, and benches with it.

Emergency services scrambled to get help across the region, but the speed with which the water filled the streets was unprecedented.

“A very heavy downpour came from above very suddenly … and the water rose a meter or a meter and a half in a few minutes,” said the mayor of Riba Roja de Turia.

In other regions, news began to emerge that people were missing after being swept away by floods.

Nevertheless, the Civil Defense did not send a warning to the residents of the Valencia region to stay off the roads until two hours later, after 8:00 p.m.

Many questioned the timing of the warning, which came more than 12 hours after Spain’s weather agency issued its first red warning.

Some said it arrived too late for people to seek shelter on upper floors or get off roads that were busy with commuters returning home after work.

Paco was driving from Valencia to nearby Picascent when he was caught off guard by a flash flood that engulfed the roads.

He told El Mundo newspaper that “the speed of the water was crazy” as it dragged the cars along: “The pressure was enormous. I managed to get out of the car and the water pushed me against the fence, which I managed to grab onto, but I couldn’t move.’

“It didn’t let me. My clothes were torn off,” he said.

Patricia Rodriguez of Sedavi was also affected by the flood on her way home from work.

She told local media that the water began to rise as she sat in the lane near Paiporta and cars began to float.

“We were afraid the river would burst its banks because we were right in the line of fire,” she said. She managed to escape on foot with the help of another driver and watched in horror as a young man nearby carried the newborn child to safety.

“It’s just as well no one slipped, because if we had we would have been swept away by the current,” she said.

Posts on social media help paint a picture of the chaos that engulfed the region as night fell.

One video posted on X shows wheelchair-bound residents of a home for the elderly in Pyport stuck in a dining room with brown floodwater up to their knees.

Ruth Moyano, a resident of Benetusser, near Valencia, described the increasingly desperate situation in her town on X. Pleading for help, she said she was hiding with her neighbors upstairs when one of them suffered a heart attack and died.

“The Civil Guard arrived on foot, but they are unable to access the residence because a car is stuck in the driveway,” she wrote early Wednesday morning. “Can someone tell me if someone else can help?”

The morning brought its trials. Daylight showed the full extent of the destruction: dozens of cars piled on top of each other, destroyed businesses and entire cities covered in mud and debris.

In Valencia, a man named Juliano Sanchez was rescued with symptoms of hypothermia after being held by palm trees for seven hours.

“I didn’t want to die,” he told El Periódico. “I grabbed hold of some palm trees and held on as hard as I could so the river wouldn’t sweep me away.”

But many are less fortunate.

Dozens of people are still missing across the region, while those who survived said they were helpless in the face of the horrific destruction.

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