How could La Liga play on with Spain engulfed in grief?

As catastrophe continued to unfold near Valencia, players and coaches were expected to push their pain to one side

- Sid Lowe

Thousands of people were at Mestalla at the weekend, huge queues all along Avenida de Aragón where Valencia's players arrived, but there was no game on, not here. They came instead with water, food and clothes for victims of the greatest natural catastrophe the country has seen: floods that have killed more than 210 people and destroyed towns and lives in the Horta Sud, just inland and south of the city, where a year's worth of rain fell in eight hours.

Hundreds of cars and vans turned up and unloaded, and many more made their way by foot. More than a million tonnes of aid filled the space under the stand, silent above them.

Three-and-a-half kilometres away at the Ciutat de València, home of second-division Levante, the scene was much the same. Across the bridges that connect the city to the areas hit hardest, more came, carrying shovels and buckets. On the morning that Valencia had been due to play Real Madrid, 10,000 volunteers gathered at the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències.

On Thursday, the federation ratified La Liga's decision to postpone Valencia's game against Madrid and Rayo Vallecano's visit to Villarreal. In the second division, Levante-Málaga, Castellón-Racing Ferrol and Eldense-Huesca were postponed. On Sunday, as the "Dana" moved towards Andalucía, so was Almería-Córdoba. Everyone else played, though, starting with Alavés against Mallorca on Friday.

After five consecutive defeats, Alavés won but the coach Luis García, who forged his career in the region, from Altea to Villajoyosa, from Villarreal B to Elche and Benidorm, said: "However you look at it, playing this makes no sense."