Some families in Spain were planning funerals on Tuesday, days after their relative’s corpses were found in the wreckage of floods that killed at least 215 people. Others, caught between grief and hope, were still waiting for news. They wondered if maybe, miraculously, a missing relative could still be alive somewhere in the muck.
A full week after the catastrophic rains, the government has still not published an official public figure on the number of missing.
“We want to be very cautious,” Óscar Puente, the Spanish transport minister, said in a radio interview on Monday. Officials have tried to dispel unsubstantiated reports that almost 2,000 people are missing; Mr. Puente said that cabinet members had discussed a “fairly low figure, but we do not trust that this figure corresponds to reality.”
Many families, though, have not waited for the government to start raising the alarm.
As volunteers came with tractors and brooms to help clean up, others took to the internet. Social media pages have lit up with pictures of the disappeared. One crowdsourced map of the area around Valencia lists their last-known locations. Another collects real-time information about the things residents need most urgently.
“We had to act quickly, because people were without basic resources,” said Jorge Sáiz, 32, who built that aid map with his wife, Sandra Navarro, 31.
Last week, a social media account began sharing photos and information about missing people. The page is called “DANA Desaparecidos,” which roughly translates to “Missing From the Storm.”
Some of them are young. Others are older. There are mustaches and soccer jerseys, pets and peace signs. Their smiling pictures have become a grim yearbook grid of Spain’s suspended grief.
In one of about a hundred posts, a man with a round face smiles, his eyes crinkling above stubbly cheeks.
His name is Luciano Bravo Morales.
Mr. Bravo, 58, was walking in Catarroja, a town near the city of Valencia, in eastern Spain, when the floodwaters began to rise last Tuesday night, Alexia Romero, his niece, said in a phone call.
He called his family and climbed on top of a car, she said. Then, he grabbed the awning of a bar.
“The last thing he said was, ‘The water is rising too much, the water is going to take me away,’” said Ms. Romero, 32.
Her family called a hotline that had been set up by the local government and filed an official missing person’s report. They also shared his photograph on social media.
The difference in the responses shocked them, she said. No officials have called her family, she noted, but the people running the social media pages have reached out to ask if they need help.
“I know that the streets need to be cleaned but — with all due respect — I think they should prioritize searching for missing persons,” Ms. Romero said. “The life of a person is more important than cleaning the lower parts of a house.”
After days of waiting for news, her family just wants to know what happened to Mr. Bravo.
“I don’t know how much more time we have left,” she said. “It’s been a week, we’re expecting the worst, but the sooner we can find out, the better.”
The government plans to publish a provisional count of the missing soon, Nieves Goicoechea, communications director for the Spanish Interior Ministry, said in a phone interview.
But the reports are complicated. Several people may have called to report the same person, Mr. Puente said. That could lead to an overcount.
There could also be an undercount. People can only file an official report in person, which some may not yet have been able to do. Many police stations have also been damaged or destroyed.
“The government cannot declare a person missing through a phone call,” Ms. Goicoechea said, adding, “There is transparency, but our transparency must be responsible.”
As the government tries to get organized, families grow angrier.
Samuel Ruiz, 28, is still looking for his father, Francisco Ruiz Martínez. He said that Mr. Ruiz Martínez, 64, had been driving his nephews near Montserrat, a town near Valencia, when the car got caught in the floods.
Mr. Ruiz Martínez broke the window to get the boys — who are 5 and 10 — safely to its roof. But when he tried to climb up himself, his son said, he slipped.
“The water took him away,” Mr. Ruiz said in a phone interview. “He disappeared.”
The family also called the hotline and reported his disappearance. They filed an in-person report and gave a DNA sample. They also have not yet received any official information. “The response of the authorities has been lamentable,” Mr. Ruiz said.
But people on social media, he added, have been reposting his father’s picture, trying to spread the word.
“The most efficient response came from the volunteers and all the neighbors in the area,” he said. “If it had not been for them — and if we had waited for the response of the authorities — this catastrophe would have been much worse.”
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