BARCELONA, Spain — Recurring storms in eastern Spain that led to Massive flooding last week killed at least 217 peoplemainly near Valencia, dumped rain on Barcelona on Monday, prompting authorities to suspend commuter rail service.

Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente said he was suspending all commuter trains in northeastern Catalonia, a region of 8 million people, at the request of civil protection officials.

Cell phones in Barcelona issued an alert of “extreme and continuous rain” in the city’s southern suburbs. The alert urged people to avoid normally dry gorges or canals.

Puente said rains had forced air traffic controllers to change the schedule of 15 flights operating at Barcelona airport, located on the city’s southern flank.

Several highways were closed due to flooding.

Classes were canceled in Tarragona, a city in southern Catalonia, halfway between Barcelona and Valencia, after a red rain alert was issued.

Meanwhile, in Valencia, searches continued for bodies inside houses and thousands of damaged cars scattered in the streets, on the highways and in the canals that channeled last week’s floods in populated areas.

Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said authorities still could not give a reliable estimate of the number of missing. Spanish national television RTVE, however, broadcast calls for help from several desperate people whose loved ones are missing.

In the municipality of Aldaia, around fifty soldiers, police and firefighters, some in overalls, searched the underground parking lot of a huge shopping center looking for possible victims. They used a small boat and searchlights to navigate the huge structure with vehicles submerged in at least a meter of murky water.

Police spokesman Ricardo Gutiérrez told reporters that so far around 50 vehicles had been found and no bodies had been discovered in them.

The Bonaire shopping center’s 1,800 underground parking spaces quickly filled with water and mud on Tuesday and Wednesday as Valencia’s southern suburbs were hit by tsunami-like flooding. The team uses four pumps to remove the water.

Citizens, volunteers and thousands of soldiers and police continued their efforts. a gargantuan cleaning effort to remove the mud and debris.

Many people feel abandoned by the authorities, their anger erupting on Sunday when a crowd threw mud at Spanish royal couple and prime minister and regional leaders on their first visit to Paiporta, where more than 60 people have died and the survivors lost their homes and still have no drinking water.

Spain is used to autumn storms that can cause flooding, but the latest ones have caused the deadliest floods in living memory for Spaniards.

Climatologists and meteorologists say the immediate cause of the flooding was a severed low-pressure storm system that migrated from an unusually wavy and blocked jet stream. It was probably fueled by a record temperature Mediterranean Sea. This system simply parked itself over the area and triggered a flood.

The Spanish Navy transport ship “Galicia” arrived at the port of Valencia on Monday with marines, helicopters and trucks loaded with food and water to help with the relief effort, which included 7,500 troops and thousands of reinforcements. police.