In Valencia, the search continues for bodies inside houses and thousands of wrecked cars strewn in the streets, on highways, and in canals that channeled last week’s floods into populated areas.

Spain’s interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said that authorities can still not give a reliable estimate of the missing. Spanish national television RTVE, however, has broadcast pleas for help by several desperate people whose loved ones are unaccounted for.

In the Aldaia municipality, some 50 soldiers, police and firefighters, some wearing wetsuits, searched in a huge shopping center’s underground parking lot for possible victims. They used a small boat and spotlights to move around in the huge structure with vehicles submerged in at least a meter of murky water.

Police spokesman Ricardo Gutierrez told reporters that so far some 50 vehicles had been found and no bodies had been discovered there.

The Bonaire shopping mall’s 1,800 underground parking spaces quickly filled with water and mud on Tuesday and Wednesday when the southern outskirts of Valencia were hit by a tsunami-like flooding. The team is using four pumps to remove the water.

Citizens, volunteers and thousands of soldiers and police officers pressed on with their gargantuan clean-up effort to clear out mud and debris.

Footage has shown severe flooding in the town of Viladecans just outside of Barcelona.

Police spokesman Ricardo Gutierrez told reporters that so far some 50 vehicles had been found in the Aldaia municipality, and no bodies had been discovered there.

He said soldiers, police and firefighters, some wearing wetsuits, searched a huge shopping centre’s underground car park for possible victims. They used a small boat and spotlights to move around in the huge structure with vehicles submerged in at least 3ft of murky water.