Spain hit by new flash floods: Freak torrential deluge sends cars floating down the street in Girona just over a week after 200 people died in Valencia disaster

Spain has been hit by a new flood disaster after a torrential deluge sent cars floating through the streets of Girona.

Footage shows a raging torrent of water sweeping away everything in its path, including several vehicles, as it swept through the center of the Catalan city of Cadaques this morning.

Today, residents woke up to a new scene of devastation, with Mayor Pia Serinyana revealing that a total of 32 cars had been washed away by the floodwaters caused by an overflowing nearby river.

Many ended up piled on top of each other near a bridge in front of the city casino, with at least one of the destroyed vehicles appearing to belong to foreign tourists due to its clearly visible license plates.

This comes just over a week after another flood disaster hit Spain, particularly the Valencia region, with more than 200 people confirmed dead.

Miraculously, there were no reports of human casualties in the former fishing village of Cadaques on Friday.

Catalan weather agency Meteocat, which published images of the latest flash flood to hit Spain in the early hours of this morning, said: ‘This is how the Cadaques current goes down after this morning’s intense and persistent rain, where there is likely to be more than 100 mm of rain fell.’

A local resident said on X: ‘The situation is very serious in Cadaques. Dozens of cars have been swept away by the city’s swollen floodwaters, which are blocking the bridge.

“It’s been years since something like this happened in Cadaques.”

The city’s mayor, Serinyana, confirmed early this morning that no one had been injured or killed and that only property damage had occurred.

She said the number of cars swept downstream had reached 32 after the council warned residents not to park in the area, adding: ‘We had a warning from the Operations Coordination Center of Catalonia but people parked their cars [anyway] and the water swept them away.”

Serinyana added: “A lot of water has fallen on the mountain and although it has hardly rained in the city, the water has swept away some parked cars.”

The heaviest rainfall occurred between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. While rain warnings remained in force for northeastern Catalonia, the local meteorological service predicted that rain will ease this weekend.

One local resident admitted: ‘If this raging flood of water had come through the city during the day, I’m sure we would have been looking at mass casualties. The timing of this happened saved us from certain tragedy.”

Cadaques is just over three hundred miles north of Valencia, where more than two hundred people, including two Britons, died in flash floods at the end of October.

Meanwhile, Paiporta in Valencia has been labeled by Spanish media as ground zero of the natural disaster with 78 people still missing, while officials say the real number could be higher.

More than sixty people were killed in Paiporta when a wave of water flowed through the Poyo Canal that cuts through the center.

Frustration over the survivors’ sense of abandonment exploded in Paiporta on Sunday as a crowd greeted Spain’s royal family and officials with a barrage of mud and other objects.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was rushed away and the royal couple ultimately had to cancel the visit after speaking to several distraught neighbors amid a chaotic scene.

The mayor of Paiporta, a middle-class community of 30,000, pleaded Tuesday for a “higher authority” to intervene and take control of her municipality, saying the floods had made its survival impossible.

Mayor Maribel Albalat said all municipal buildings, from the city hall to the local police, have been badly damaged and many local officials are “in shock.”

“Paiporta is a strong village, but this is overwhelming its capacity as a local government,” she said.

The throbbing ‘thump, thump, thump’ of the huge twin-propeller Chinook helicopters that flew overhead with the arrival of the military added to the post-apocalyptic atmosphere.

However, the destruction went far beyond Paiporta and covered a large number of municipalities, especially on the southern flank of the city of Valencia on the Mediterranean coast. At least one person died from the floods in seventy-eight places.

Police have expanded their search to nearby marshes and coastline, where water carried away some.

The residents, companies and municipal councils of the affected places can apply for financial assistance from a 10.6 billion euro aid package from the Spanish government.

The regional government of Valencia, which has been under fire for failing to warn the population of the danger in time, has asked the central government in Madrid for 31 billion euros to ensure the recovery.

More than a week later, the cleanup continues to remove the tons of mud and debris clogging street after street, filling thousands of ground floors and destroying living rooms and kitchens.

Neighborhoods were left without shops and supermarkets after all their products were ruined. Many houses still have no drinking water.

A makeshift army of volunteers were the first helpers on the ground, scooping up and sweeping away the sticky brown sludge that covered everything, and helping to remove pile after pile of rubble that prevented access to cars in many areas.

Authorities eventually mobilized 15,000 soldiers and police reinforcements to help firefighters search for bodies and retrieve thousands of wrecked cars scattered across streets and canal beds.

On every corner, cars are stacked on top of each other or driven into buildings, light poles, trees and bridge overpasses.