After Spain’s Deadly Floods, Search for the Missing Grows Desperate

Some families in Spain were planning funerals on Tuesday, days after their relatives’ bodies were found in the aftermath of floods that killed at least 217 people. Others were still waiting for news, caught between grief and hope that a missing relative could still be alive somewhere in the muck.

A full week after the catastrophic rains, the government has not published an official figure of the number of missing, even as it approved a major relief package on Tuesday of 10.6 billion euros, or $11.6 billion.

“We want to be very cautious,” Óscar Puente, the Spanish transport minister, said in a radio interview on Monday.

The relief package includes payments of up to about $66,000 to people whose homes were damaged and additional aid for people with serious injuries.

“There are still missing people to be found, and more companies, businesses and families affected,” Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said on Tuesday. “That is why we must continue working.”

Many families, though, are not waiting for the government as they search for missing relatives.

Social media pages have lit up with pictures of the disappeared. One crowdsourced map of the area around Valencia, the hardest-hit area in eastern Spain, lists their last-known locations. Another collects real-time information about the things residents need most urgently.