The story of these floods has been full of grim, unsettling images.
Now there is another one – the Bonaire shopping centre in Aldaia.
Today, it was an awful place. Not because of the immense damage wrought by the floods, but because of the horror that may lie ahead.
The emergency services are pumping out the underground car park that lies beneath this retail complex, one of the biggest in the country, and they don’t know what they will find.
There will be bodies – that seems sure. The question is how many. And the fear is that it could be dozens.
You can see the ramps that run down to the car park, and you can also see the water level glistening, not far down the ramp.
Pumping out this entire car park will be a marathon job. Searching it will take patience, specialist equipment and stoicism. There will surely be grim discoveries down there.
Scuba diving teams have been sent in, but we were told that they have been unable to go into the water so far. It is full of debris, oil, diesel, and goodness knows what else.
Today we saw an array of equipment being delivered – boats, pumps, a military ambulance, kayaks and lifting machinery.
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An enormous amount of resource is being thrown at this, at a time when so many towns are complaining that they feel forgotten.
Cristina Vano, a judicial expert, is working here as a volunteer, checking the cars strewn around in the ground-level car parks.
Her job is to peer inside and see if she can see a body. If she can’t, she puts an X on the side using coloured tape; if she can, she calls the police.
She is waiting for the first vehicles to be pulled from the Bonaire underground car park, and she is steeled for it to be a horrible experience.
“There is space for 1,700 cars in there,” she says.
“We were told it wasn’t full, but there were certainly many cars in there. The problem is that a lot of people took refuge there, so we don’t know what to expect.
“The police in Aldaia were talking about us finding maybe 80 people – I hope it will be less. It’s really sad, but we are expecting a lot.”
We speak to the police, who tell us that searching the car park will be a long and complicated process.
They don’t want to make any estimates about the number of cars involved, nor the number of people. But someone involved in the operation speaks to us after coming out.
“A lot more than a hundred cars are in there,” the person says. “Maybe hundreds.”
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There is an army officer, from special services, who tells me that his unit of Green Berets are ready to do anything that is needed. They have been helping to clear out the shopping centre for days now, and will continue. But he knows this is not a quick job.
On the far side, we see a group of firefighters walking slowly away from that cursed ramp that leads down to the car park. Their faces are drawn, an expression that we see a lot during a day observing this recovery mission.
Everyone involved in this knows that there is no chance of finding a survivor in this flooded car park. All they can do is hope that it’s not as bad as they fear.
Slovakia’s prime minister has drawn criticism from across Europe and from his own people after his surprise visit to Moscow for face-to-face talks with Vladimir Putin on Sunday.
Robert Fico is only the third EU leader to visit Mr Putin in Moscow since the Russian president ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The Kremlin said the two leaders discussed “the international situation” and Russian natural gas deliveries.
Russian natural gas still flows through Ukraine and to some other European countries, including Slovakia, under a five-year agreement signed before the war that is due to expire at the end of the year.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy told EU leaders last week that Ukraine had no intention of renewing the deal, which Mr Fico insisted would hurt Slovakia and its interests.
He said his visit to Moscow was a reaction to Mr Zelenskyy’s statement and that Mr Putin had told him that Russia was still ready to deliver gas to the West.
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‘It smells like treason’
In Slovakia’s capital, Bratislava, people took to the streets to protest after the meeting, with banners in support of Ukraine as well as unflattering depictions of Mr Fico on display.
One sign simply read: “It smells like treason.”
Mr Zelenskyy said the “unwillingness” shown by Mr Fico to replace Russian gas is a “big security issue” for Europe, and questioned the potential financial incentives being offered to the Slovak leader.
“Why is this leader so dependent on Moscow? What is being paid to him, and what does he pay with?,” Mr Zelenskyy said.
In his nightly address on Monday, Mr Zelenskyy said that Mr Fico had received an offer of compensation for losses from the expiring transit deal, but that he “did not want compensation for the Slovaks”.
In a statement, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said the “weakness, dependence and short-sightedness” of Mr Fico’s energy policy is a “threat to the whole of Europe”.
The Slovak leader’s “persistent attempts” to maintain energy dependence on Moscow is “surprising” and represents a “shameful policy of appeasement”, the Ukrainian ministry added.
The Czech government also criticised Mr Fico’s trip to Moscow, pointing to its own decision to wean itself off Russian energy.
“It was the Czech government that secured independence from Russian energy supplies so that we wouldn’t have to crawl in front of a mass murderer,” Czech foreign minister Jan Lipavsky said.
In early December 1955, the phone rang at an air base in Colorado Springs. The officers on the watch floor of the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) – who were defending the skies above the US and Canada – stiffened.
The Cold War was in full swing and tensions were running high.
The command’s director of operations Colonel Harry Shoup answered the call. On the other end was a child’s voice asking: “Is this Santa Claus?”
According to the colonel’s daughter Terri Van Keuren, now 75, her father initially thought it was a prank, and replied: “I’m the commander of the Combat Alert Center. Who’s this?”
In response, the child started crying and asked if he was one of “Santa’s helpers”.
The colonel then decided to play along, replying that he was indeed Santa Claus and mustering a convincing “ho-ho-ho”.
This surprise call started the nearly 70-year tradition of the Santa Tracker, which allows children around the world to track the whereabouts of Father Christmas via a livestream and a phone line answered by volunteers.
It is now run by CONAD’s successor, the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD).
But how did a child seemingly get the phone number of a colonel in the US air force?
The American department store Sears had printed an advert in a local newspaper telling children they could call Santa, Terri explains.
“They had printed one digit wrong in the phone number. And it was dad’s top secret number.”
Colonel Shoup called the phone company and asked for a new number for his office.
Meanwhile, the phone at CONAD was “ringing off the hook” and Colonel Shoup told his staff they were to answer the calls as Santa Claus.
In the story told by Terri, on 24 December that year her parents arrived at the base to deliver cookies to those on duty, and found the military establishment unusually festive.
A picture of a sleigh had been drawn by a map writer on plexiglass – which was used to mark where unidentified flying objects were located.
“Next thing they knew, dad was calling the radio station. ‘This is Colonel Shoup, the commander of the Combat Alert Center in Colorado Springs. And we have an unidentified flying object. Why, it looks like a sleigh’,” says Terri.
Terri, who lives in Castle Rock, Colorado, was six years old when her father became the “Santa Colonel”. She says the NORAD Santa Tracker, which reaches millions of children around the world every year, is his “legacy”.
NORAD’s tracking of Santa is a military operation in itself beginning on 1 December.
Brigadier General Jocelyn Schermerhorn, a senior US military officer in Canada, tells Sky News how the day unfolds on Christmas Eve.
“We have about a thousand people come together to set up the operations centre that is used to track Santa and that allows anyone to call in to check on his whereabouts”.
Volunteers are responsible for answering calls from tens of thousands of children around the world. In 2022, 78,000 calls were answered at Peterson Space Force Base.
For 10 years Terri was one of these volunteers. “I always wore a t-shirt that had a picture of my dad. It says: ‘My dad’s the Santa Colonel’.”
What’s next for the Santa Tracker? Terri says her father’s festive story is so famous she’s “had several requests to make a movie out of it”.
Head to Sky News’ YouTube and other social media channels to watch NORAD’s Santa Tracker and find out where he is in the world delivering presents.
The sister of a British man who has been missing in Spain for nine days has said “panic” is setting in.
Courtney George last spoke to her brother John Hardy on Saturday 14 December, around the time she believes he was due to drive from Alicante to Benidorm.
She reported him missing after he failed to get on his flight home on Wednesday 18 December.
Mr Hardy, from Belfast, has several tattoos, including half a sleeve on his right arm and a panther on his torso.
Police in Northern Ireland have confirmed a 37-year-old is believed to be missing.
Ms George said her brother, who has two sons, would “never” go so long without contacting her.
“Another day waking up hoping what is going on is a nightmare, but realising this is real life. The panic sets in,” she wrote on Facebook yesterday.
“Another day, no contact from John – never ever would this happen… What’s Christmas without family? My big brother hasn’t just vanished! That doesn’t happen!”
She added today his sons “need to know” where their dad is.
She continued: “There will be no Christmas for my family. The only thing we are focused on is getting our loved one back.”
The distressed Ms George is offering a reward for anyone with “any helpful information to find John”.
The Police Service in Northern Ireland said the force had “received a report on Wednesday, 18th December that a 37-year-old man from Belfast, holidaying in Spain, was believed to be missing”.
It added: “Enquiries are ongoing in conjunction with our international policing partners.”