A red alert warning of “extreme danger” because of torrential rain has been issued for Barcelona, as elsewhere in Spain search teams continue to scour flooded areas for bodies.

At least 217 people have died after heavy rain in eastern Spain caused flash floods that swept away almost everything in their path.

People were trapped in cars, homes and businesses as the waters surged through the disaster zone last week.

Six days later, the search and rescue operation continues for the unknown number of missing people, with thousands of soldiers brought in to help.

And as communities continue to reel from the catastrophic floods – and mourn their losses – more rain is forecast for parts of the country.

Today, the local government in Catalonia has warned of “continuous and torrential” rain in two regions, saying people should avoid travel and stay away from streams and ravines.

A red alert “extreme danger” warning has been issued for Barcelona.

“Do not travel unless strictly necessary,” the alert told people nearby.

Footage on social media shows heavy rainfall overwhelming stairwells and leaving streets strewn with water.

Dozens of flights have been cancelled at El Prat airport after the terminal building was flooded.

Elsewhere in eastern Spain, much attention has been paid to an underground car park in Aldaia, where emergency services have been trying to drain the floodwater to gain access.

There had been fears that dozens of bodies could be found inside the car park after people died trapped by the rising waters at the Bonaire shopping centre.

However firefighters on the ground have downplayed the situation, Spanish media report.

“Since yesterday afternoon we were able to get in with canoes, boats, drones and on foot,” one of the firefighters told El Pais.

“Yesterday we went through the entire car park and luckily we haven’t found any bodies.”

They said that could change as the car park empties, but that at the moment the cars are all empty.

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There has been anger at the response from authorities and a group of survivors hurled mud and insults at Spain’s King Felipe when the monarch visited one of the worst-affected towns.

By the time authorities sent alerts to mobile phones warning of the seriousness of the flooding and asking people to stay at home, many were already on the road or in places like underground garages that became death traps.

Valencia’s MotoGP race, which had been scheduled for later this month, has been cancelled after floods wrought destruction on the track.

Thousands of volunteers have been helping to clear away thick layers of mud from streets and homes.

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.

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.

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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.

Moldovan authorities are seeing “massive interference” by Russia in the country’s runoff vote for the presidency, an official has said.

The incumbent president’s national security adviser Stanislav Secrieru described it as “an effort with high potential to distort the outcome”.

Moldova is voting in a presidential election which could determine the country’s future as a nation bidding to join the EU or getting closer to Russia.

Pro-Western incumbent Maia Sandu is facing a second and final round against Alexandr Stoianoglo, a former prosecutor general backed by the pro-Russian Socialist Party.

Ms Sandu has been championing Moldova’s effort to join the EU by 2030, while Mr Stoianoglo said that as president he too would back EU integration but also develop ties with Russia in the national interest.

He has vowed to try to revive cheap Russian gas supplies and said he would meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin if Moldovans wanted it.

In the first round held on 20 October, Ms Sandu obtained 42% of the ballot but failed to win an outright majority.

Mr Stoianoglo outperformed polls in the first round with almost 26% of the vote.

Moldova, an eastern European country of three million people, narrowly voted for closer ties to the European Union in a referendum last month which was dominated by claims of Russian interference.

A European Union spokesman claimed at the time there had been “unprecedented intimidation and foreign interference by Russia and its proxies” as Ms Sandu accused groups “working together with foreign forces” of trying to buy 300,000 votes.

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During the campaign, Ms Sandu has portrayed Mr Stoianoglo as the Kremlin’s man and a political Trojan horse.

Mr Stoianoglo says that is untrue and that she has failed to look out for the interests of ordinary Moldovans.

Moscow has said her government is “Russophobic”.

The EU is expected to watch the Moldovan election closely as it comes a week after Georgia, another ex-Soviet state hoping to join the 27-member state bloc, re-elected a ruling party seen as increasingly pro-Russian.

The president told Sky News that the election was “stolen”.