[Trending News] Heavy rains return to Spain putting country on RED alert

Meanwhile in the Balearics small amounts of rain have been falling all week with a wet weekend being forecast. Sixteen litres of rain per square metre fell in Lluc overnight.

Spaniards are still nervous after heavy rains last year caught authorities on the hop and caused the country’s deadliest natural disaster in decades, with many blaming local and national officials for warning people of the danger too late.

Images broadcast on a local television station showed a car being swept down the river Lorca in Murcia. A woman had to be rescued from the car by local firemen, La 7 television said. Another man had to be rescued from his vegetable patch with a tractor, La Sexta said.

Fernando Lopez Miras, president of the Murcia region in southeastern Spain, said there had been no casualties on Thursday although one person died when they were swept away in a flooded ravine earlier in the week.

“There was nothing to indicate that it was going to rain as it is raining,” Lopez Miras said on La Sexta. “Every day the ravines are accumulating more water and there are more flooded streets. The water won’t stop and the Aemet’s alerts hadn’t forecast this would be so prolonged.”

Aemet said that in some areas 120mm had fallen in 12 hours and some weather stations had experienced more rain in March than would normally be expected in all of the spring season.