The eerie images that one faces in Valencia seem to be taken from a science fiction film. Only life always proves in the cruelest way that it is ahead of art. The third largest city in Spain was “hit” hard by unprecedented bad weather, a result of the climate crisis that the whole planet is experiencing. Already the country counts dozens of dead, (a number that is expected to increase), many are injured, while the damage to infrastructure and property is incalculable.

Spaniards recount how they experienced the horrors of deadly floods

The Spaniards who experienced the deadly floods are shocking, as they recount in dramatic tones what they experienced.

“When the water started to rise, it came like a wave,” said Guillermo Serrano Perez. “It was like a tsunami.” The 21-year-old from Paiporta, near Valencia, is one of thousands of people who experienced the deadly floods as reported by the BBC.

He was driving on the highway with his parents on Tuesday afternoon when the water rushed in. They survived by climbing a bridge and abandoning their car in the fury of the flood.

Although heavy rain battered the area for hours, many, like Guillermo Serrano Pérez and his family, managed to survive.

THE Paco he was driving from Valencia to nearby Picacent when he was caught off guard by flash floods that engulfed the roads.

He told El Mundo newspaper “the speed of the water was crazy” as he swept the cars away: “The pressure was terrible. I managed to get out of the car and the water pushed me against a fence which I managed to grab, but I couldn’t move.”

“He wouldn’t let me go. He tore my clothes off,” she said.

OR Patricia Rodríguez, from Sedaví, was also caught in the floods on her way home from work.

He told local media that the water began to rise as he sat in a lane of traffic near Paiporta and cars began to float away.

“We were afraid the river would burst its banks because we were right in the line of fire,” he said. She managed to escape on foot with the help of another driver and watched in horror as a young man nearby carried a newborn baby to safety.

“It was just as important that nobody slipped, because if we did, the current would have carried us away,” he said.

In a video shared on social media, residents of a wheelchair-bound care home in Paiporta can be seen trapped in a dining room with brown floodwater up to their knees.

OR Ruth Moyanoa resident of Benetússer, near Valencia, chronicled the increasingly desperate situation in the city on social media.

Pleading for help, she said she was staying with neighbors on the upper floors of her building when one of them suffered a heart attack and died.

“The Militia arrived on foot but cannot access the property because there is a car stuck at the entrance,” he wrote early Wednesday. “Can anyone tell me if anyone else can help?”

The morning brought its own challenges. Daylight revealed the full extent of the devastation, with dozens of cars piled on top of each other, destroyed businesses and entire towns covered in mud and debris.

In Valencia, a man named Juliano Sánchez drecovered with symptoms of hypothermia after being stuck in palm trees for seven hours.

“I didn’t want to die,” he told El Periódico. “I grabbed some palm trees and held on with all my strength so that I wouldn’t be swept away by the river.”

But many were less fortunate.

Dozens of people are still missing across the region, while survivors have described being helpless in the face of horrific devastation.

“We saw two cars being swept away by the current and we don’t know if there were people inside,” said a man in Las Provincias. “We’ve never seen anything like it before.”