'So many tensions' Anger in Spain at response to floods

Everyone in Chiva has their own memories of what happened here a week ago. For some it is the frantic phone calls to loved ones; for others, the disbelief as this small Valencian town, like so many others, was swallowed up by flood waters that bore away cars and trees as if they were paper boats.

- Sam Jones

For Lourdes Vallés, it is the sound of a car horn sounding through the sodden darkness of last Tuesday night.

"That car was swept by outside and I didn't know that cars start up when they're flooded," she says, standing in the damp ruins of the medical clinic she runs.

"I just can't get that out of my head. The sound of it and the powerlessness I felt. There was nothing I could do."

That sense of powerlessness lingers in Chiva, despite the arrival yesterday morning of more troops with rucksacks and bed rolls, and the army of volunteers with brooms and good Samaritans who pad the streets, offering residents water, sandwiches, bananas and apples.

Elena, a Romanian woman who lives close to the ravine that bisects Chiva, reluctantly accepted a banana. But what she really wants is to get back into the flat she shared with her late husband, and to start putting her life back together.