Cars are washed away and buying centre is flooded throughout ferocious storms in Spanish vacationer hotspots – as video reveals twister ripping by way of British expat’s home

Raging floods are turning streets into rivers as ferocious storms bring downpours of heavy rain to popular holiday hotspots across eastern Spain.

Torrential rainfall has brought more than 60 litres of water per square meter to the Murcia province today, with forecasters warning that more rain is still to come.

Video shared online shows how cars are being swept away in flash floods that have left shopping centres, city buildings and entire streets filled with murky water.

Spanish meteorological agency Aemet has issued yellow-level alerts for the Murcia region today as Storm Laurence pummels the area with 15 to 22mm of rain per hour.

Orange-level alerts are in affect for the southwest and Mar Menor region, with forecasters warning the area could see up to 30mm of rainfall per hour.

Emergency crews have already responded to at least 65 incidents in the seaport municipality of Águilas, located on Murcia’s Mediterranean coastline, today due to the extreme weather. 

Crews in Águilas rescued nine people who were trapped inside their cars in a ravine. The occupants of several boats were also helped to safety in the same area. 

The latest bout of horrifying weather comes just days after a tornado ripped through Alicante, roughly 50 miles from Murcia, and damaged a British family’s overseas home.

Surveillance camera footage captured the moment a wicked twister tore apart Cathy and Adrien Branders’ home in Torremendo, Alicante last Thursday.

Witnesses said the tornado suddenly appeared out of nowhere during the height of Storm Konrad last week and ‘within 10 seconds’ had cause extensive damage to the expats’ home.

Fences, chairs, solar panels and other debris were flung around the property as the tornado touched down.

Photos shared online show that an electrical tower and several trees were torn down by the twister, which also caused damage to the property’s roof and at least one wall.

Although the twister ripped through multiple neighbourhoods, it was initially declared not to be a tornado due to its lack of contact with the ground.

Experts have now stated that it was in fact a tornado. A Meteorihuela spokesperson said: ‘After a visual assessment of the incident, the vortex of condensed air and water vapor has touched land, and therefore it is believed to be a tornado.’

Heavy rains hit Spain for a third week in a row today, with at least two people missing and hundreds evacuated in the southern region of Andalusia – where several rivers had overflowed, or were at risk of doing so. 

Flash floods unleashed by heavy rains prompted officials to evacuate over 350 homes, shut down roads and cancel classes today.

Regional officials ordered the evacuation of 365 homes in the village of Campanillas, near Malaga city, late on Monday after a nearby river burst its banks. The evacuees spent the night in a municipal sports hall.

Andalusia’s interior chief Antonio Sanz said that 19 rivers in Andalusia were on red alert for flooding Tuesday, as bad weather spread from Malaga on the southern coast to landlocked areas near Sevilla and Cordoba. 

A total of 40 highways across Andalusia, as well as some rail lines, had to be closed due to rising waters.

The regional leader of the autonomous community, Juan Manuel Moreno, urged citizens to exercise extreme caution on Tuesday.

‘Please be very careful, even if the rain eases. Crossing a stream is highly dangerous,’ he said after two people went missing in the regional capital, Seville.

Authorities believe the couple tried to cross a ravine and may have been swept away. Their empty car was found overturned nearby.

Andalusian authorities said a total of 368 families were evacuated as a preventive measure in the province of Malaga. In one of the towns, Cartama, around 20 people and their pets were rescued from their flooded homes.

The same area in Malaga was hit in November when heavy rains across a large swath of Spain led to devastating flooding in the country’s east, claiming 233 lives mostly in Valencia. 

Spain has been hit with a wave of severe weather of the last few weeks that has encompassed Murcia and several other popular tourist destinations including Malaga, Valencia, Alicante and the Canary Islands.

A succession of storms – named Jana, Konrad, and Laurence – have passed through eastern Spain in just a few days, pelting the region with heavy rain.

Over the last 24 hours, Storm Laurence has brought more than 14 litres per square metre of rain to Pego, Castalla and Agres, according to data from the Valencian Association of Meteorology.

More rain is expected on Thursday, as a fourth storm rolls in, although it is unclear how intense that storm will be.

The unusual string of back-to-back storms has helped the country – whose generally sunny weather is a major draw for tourists – put an end to a prolonged drought, with many dams now having water released to prevent them from overflowing.

After two weeks of rains, Spanish reservoirs are at 65.6 per cent of their capacity, above the 10-year-average, with a 5 per cent increase in the last week alone.

A British expat named Vernon shared on X that he had been bailing out his Spanish neighbours with a bucket.

‘Nobody here, including older residents, have ever known it rain 19 days out of the last 20. Torrential, relentless. All night,’ he wrote.

Scientists and government officials have linked these swings between extreme dry and wet spells to climate change, which experts say has also produced increasingly hot summers in Spain.