Spain Crisis

Francisco Murgui went out to try to salvage his motorbike when the water started to rise. He never came back. One week after catastrophic flooding devastated eastern Spain, Mara Murgui still holds out hope that her missing father is alive. He was like many people in town who went out to get their car or motorbike to safety, the 27-year-old told The Associated Press. The flash flood caught him outside, and he had to cling to a tree in order to escape drowning. He called us to tell us he was fine, that we shouldn't worry. But when Mara set out into the streets of Sedav to try to rescue him from the water washing away everything in its path, he was nowhere to be found. He held up until 1 in the morning, she said. By 2, I went outside with a neighbour and a rope to try to locate him. But we couldn't find him. And since then, we haven't heard anything about him. Spanish authorities issued their first tally of the missing on Tuesday when a Valencia court said that 89 people are confirm

Survivors of the worst natural disaster to hit Spain this century awoke to scenes of devastation on Thursday after villages were wiped out by monstrous flash floods that claimed at least 95 lives. The death toll could rise as search efforts continue with an unknown number of people still missing. The aftermath looked eerily similar to the damage left by a strong hurricane or tsunami. Wrecked vehicles, tree branches, downed power lines and household items all mired in a layer of mud covered the streets of Barrio de la Torre, just one of dozens of towns in the hard-hit region of Valencia, where 92 people died between late Tuesday and Wednesday morning. Walls of rushing water turned narrow streets into death traps and spawned rivers that ripped into the ground floors of homes and swept away cars, people and anything else in its path. The neighbourhood is destroyed, all the cars are on top of each other, it's literally smashed up, said Christian Viena, a bar owner in Barrio de la ...

Juan Carlos's bombshell announcement took most Spaniards by surprise. Neither the royal family nor the government disclosed where he was going

Brazil is emerging as a new hotspot for infections; epicentre of pandemic shifts to US.

Overall, Italy has registered 26,644 deaths of those with known coronavirus infections

In battered Italy, flags flew at half-mast during a minute of silence to honour the more than 11,500 people who have perished from the virus

Spain is the second-worst-hit country in the EU, after Italy, with more than 47,000 infected cases

Spain has been in political gridlock without a proper government for most of last year after two inconclusive elections

When the economic meltdown of 2008 struck, there were few countries harder hit than Spain