Spanish rescue workers opened a temporary morgue in a convention centre as the death toll rose to 205 people, most of them in Valencia, the eastern region that bore the brunt of the devastation.
Some 500 soldiers were deployed to search for people who are still missing and help survivors of the storm, which triggered a fresh weather alert in the Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencia, where rains are expected to continue during the weekend.
Officials said the death toll is likely to keep rising. It is already Spain's worst flood-related disaster in modern history and the deadliest to hit Europe since the 1970s.
Streets were inundated after a year's worth of rain fell within just eight hours on Tuesday night (AP PHOTO)
Emergency services working to clear cars piled up at the entrance of a flooded underpass in the suburbs feared finding more trapped bodies.
"We're trying to remove vehicles bit by bit to see if there are victims," one rescue worker told state television. "We don't know."
Resident Isabel Santiago, 49, watched the scene with tears in her eyes.
"There have been so many losses, which could have been avoided. There must be a lot of people in that tunnel because they didn't have time to get out. This is inhuman."
Valencia's regional government said people seeking to help should gather at the capital's Arts and Sciences museum complex on Saturday morning to ease co-ordination.
On Friday, regional leader Carlos Mazon urged volunteers to stay put, saying the large numbers on the streets were hampering rescue and clean-up efforts.
In order to avoid any road-blocking, the government said all movements in the area would be restricted on Saturday, except for major reasons such as health, legal or work issues.
People are being urged to stay off the streets and not get in the way of rescue and clean-up efforts (AP PHOTO)
"You are being a great example, a great explosion of solidarity. We still need you," he said in a video posted on social media platform X.
In Alfafar, a suburb outside the city of Valencia, drone footage showed the tangled wreckage of dozens of vehicles strewn across rail tracks.
A year's worth of rain fell within just eight hours on Tuesday night, destroying roads, railway tracks and bridges as rivers burst their banks.
The flooding also submerged thousands of hectares of farmland in the region, which produces nearly two-thirds of citrus fruit in Spain - the world's top exporter of oranges.
"The magnitude of the catastrophe has no precedent," Transport Minister Oscar Puente told local television.
While the waters have subsided in most parts of Valencia, emergency services have still not been able to reach a few areas due to blocked roads.Â
The number of deaths has sparked anger and grief, with authorities accused of not being prepared. (AP PHOTO)
Supplies of bottled drinking water were running low in some places and residents in the Valencia suburb of Paiporta were taking turns to guard shops after authorities said 50 people had been arrested for looting.
As the death toll rose, a temporary morgue was set up at the Feria Valencia convention centre on the outskirts of Valencia city, emergency services said, and the first bodies started to arrive early on Friday.
The number of deaths has prompted anger as well as grief in Spain, with some people accusing authorities of being poorly prepared and not having warned people soon enough about the dangers posed by the storm.
Mazon has said all protocols for disaster management were followed and that authorities had begun warning people from Sunday.
The death toll is the highest from floods in Europe since 1970, when 209 people died in Romania.
Scientists say extreme weather events are becoming more frequent in Europe, and elsewhere, due to climate change. Meteorologists think the warming of the Mediterranean, which increases water evaporation, plays a key role in making torrential rains more severe.
