One week on, death toll rises to 4 from Spain flash flooding

Rescuers on Tuesday found the body of a man swept away last week by flash floods in Catalonia, purportedly while inside a mobile home, raising to four the number of people who died when storms lashed northeastern Spain.

Torrential rains hit Catalonia last Tuesday night, sparking major flooding which left one person dead in a beach town north of Barcelona and another five missing in a badly-hit area inland from the coastal city of Tarragona.

The Catalan Civil Protection service said the body had been “identified by police as the man who disappeared in Vilaverd when he was supposedly inside a mobile home”, referring to a village on the Francoli river some 30 kilometres north of Tarragona.

“The provisional toll (from the storms) now stands as four dead, all of whom have been identified, and three others still missing,” rescuers wrote on Twitter.

The storm also lashed the island of Mallorca, where rescuers on Tuesday said they had found a body. But they could not immediately confirm whether it was one of two young people who were seen being swept away by a huge wave.

Last week’s flooding and landslides forced the closure of nearly 50 roads and halted train services, as well as forcing the diversion of 37 flights, mostly in Mallorca, officials said.

The first victim was a man found on October 22 in Caldes d’Estrac, north of Barcelona, while another man’s body was found two days later at Tarragona port where the Francoli enters the sea.

A third body, that of a homeless man, was found on Monday although he was not one of those listed as missing.

Southern France was also hit by major flooding which left three people dead, one of them a British woman.