The d3ath toll from devastating flash floods in eastern Spain climbed to 158 on Thursday, with rescue teams still searching for those missing.
"There's a total of 158 people to which must be added dozens and dozens of missing," Angel Victor Torres, minister in charge of cooperation with Spain's regions, told a press conference.
A year's worth of rain fell in eight hours in parts of the Valencia region on Tuesday.
The tragedy is said to be Spain's worst flood-related disaster in modern history, and meteorologists say human-driven climate change is making such extreme weather events more frequent and destructive.
Search and rescue operations are still ongoing for those missing. Rebuilding the damaged areas will take untold weeks or months, and for now, emergency crews are grappling with inaccessible areas that have been cut off by the damage.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez warned residents in affected areas to "stay home", echoing an earlier statement from King Felipe VI who said the emergency is "not over".
More rain is expected to fall on Friday, posing risk of new flooding, since the ground is already saturated with water.
Rescue teams on Thursday discovered the bodies of eight people, including a local policeman, who had been trapped in a garage on the outskirts of the city of Valencia, Mayor Maria Jose Catala told reporters.
In the same neighbourhood of La Torre, she said, a 45-year-old woman was also found dead in her home.
Opposition politicians accused the central government in Madrid of acting too slowly to warn residents and send in rescue teams, prompting the Interior Ministry to say regional authorities were responsible for civil protection measures.
"Those people wouldn't have died if they had been warned in time," Laura Villaescusa, a neighbour and manager of a local supermarket, told Reuters.
Maribel Albalat, mayor of the nearby town of Paiporta, said residents were not warned of the imminent danger of flooding. She said 62 people had died in her town.
"We found a lot of elderly people inside their homes and people who went to get their cars. It was a trap," she told TVE.
The floods have battered Valencia's infrastructure, sweeping away bridges, roads and rail tracks, and submerged farmland in a region that produces about two-thirds of Spain's citrus crops like oranges, which the country exports globally.
About 80 km (50 miles) of roads in the eastern region were seriously damaged or impassable, said Transport Minister Oscar Puente. Many were blocked by abandoned cars.
"Unfortunately there are dead bodies in some vehicles," Puente told reporters, adding that it would take two to three weeks to re-establish the high-speed train connection between Valencia and Madrid.
Visiting a rescue coordination centre near Valencia city, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez urged people to stay at home due to the threat of more stormy weather.
"Right now the most important thing is to safeguard as many lives as possible," he told reporters.