MIguel Aleixandre, a supermarket worker and competitive athlete who lives in the small Valencian town of Utiel, was in the middle of training in his gym on Tuesday morning when staff suddenly announced they would be closing roads since dawn because of the torrential rain.

The sheer magnitude of these rains, which have so far claimed at least 205 lives in eastern, central and southern Spain, became increasingly clear as the waters of the Magro – a river that is normally little more than a stream through Utiel – began to rise and to rise.

Almost an hour earlier, Spain's state weather agency, Aemet, had updated its severe weather warning and raised the alert level to red across the entire province of Valencia. “Be very careful!” it warned. “The danger is extreme. Stay away from rivers and watercourses as flooding is possible.”

As 22-year-old Aleixandre took the elevator home to the house he lives with his mother and father on the banks of the Magro, the water in the streets was about 30 centimeters (12 inches) deep. Over the next few hours it would reach ten times that height, killing six people in the city.

“I barely managed to get into the house because of the water,” he says. “We went to the roof of the house and stayed there.”

A few minutes walk away, Inmaculada Haba was also worried when the water entered the ground floor of her house.

“We watched the river rise – normally there’s hardly any water there – and within seconds the water started rushing in,” she says. “The wall they built next to it a few years ago didn’t do anything and water also came from above the hill. Within seconds I grabbed my two dogs and herded them to the first floor.”

When Haba came down to get food for the dogs in the afternoon, the water was up to her knees. She and her family retreated upstairs, a decision that almost certainly saved their lives.

As she and her relatives sweep the last of the water from their home and dispose of their soaked belongings – “I'm fine because we're all safe and sound and material things can be replaced” – she points to the watermark left by the floods , 1.7 meters (5 ft 6 in) above its walls. “I'm not very tall and you can see how high the water was. It would have been over my head if I had tried to come down,” she says.

Fran Platero, 38, who runs a heavy equipment business, was trapped in his home with his wife and two frightened young children for five hours until rescue appeared in the form of a neighbor and his tractor around 8 p.m.

“We climbed into the shovel and he took us to safety at the top of the hotel, the highest part of the city,” Platero says. “There was a warning, but we never thought it would rain like it did here. Never. We’ve had floods before, but nothing like this.”

Platero returned the favor by working until Tuesday evening, using one of his own excavators to rescue people from their homes. But not everyone could be reached in time. “A lot of people died here,” he says. “They were old people who lived on the ground floor and couldn’t save themselves.”

Aleixandre will never forget the sights and sounds of that night. As he used a flashlight to send an emergency call to the fire helicopter flying over the city, he felt like he had stepped into a horror movie.

“You could hear the neighbors’ windows breaking because of the water pressure and then all the water came in,” he said. “And then I saw old people appear at their windows with candles to attract the rescuers’ attention.”

Aleixandre and his family were rescued at 7 a.m. on Wednesday when a small boat from the Spanish Armed Forces' Military Emergency Unit (UME) stopped in front of their home. It would be almost 12 hours before the family was allowed home; Police spent Wednesday afternoon pulling the bodies of some of their neighbors from the mud.

Like others in the city, the family is confused and angry about why the Valencian regional government only sent a civil protection alert to people's cell phones at 8:12 p.m. on Tuesday.

“The water was already three meters high,” says Aleixandre. “I keep calling it a horror movie because I don't know how else to describe it. When you see something like that on TV – or a tsunami or something like that – you feel sad and compassionate. But when you experience this story yourself, it is simply incredible. A friend’s car was parked here and it ended up at a bus stop 500 meters away, split in half and with a dumpster on top.”

The severity of the rains – predicted last week – that led to Spain's deadliest floods in decades can be clearly seen in Utiel, even in the semi-flooded aftermath. UME workers, firefighters, as well as police and civil protection officials wade through a sticky carpet of mud that is still inches deep on roads crisscrossed with hose pumps and littered with noisy generators. The mud itself has become the repository for the contents of people's homes, holding in its stubborn, orange-brown grip a child's toy, a yogurt pot, a bottle of olive oil, a spark plug and a table leg. The streets of Utiel are littered with sodden, broken sofas, carpets, lampshades, mattresses and wardrobes, and faded walls reveal glimpses of terraces and dining rooms.

Three upturned cars lie in a patch of wasteland near the river. The body of a Volkswagen Tiguan peels off like flayed skin. Nearby, a BMW appears to have survived until the mud puddles inside can be seen through an open rear window. The local Guardia Civil barracks were also hit, sending a pile of damp, official-looking chairs to a nearby landfill.

However, amid the damage, destruction and grief, there is also a strong sense of solidarity. Almost everyone in Utiel between the ages of five and 90 appears to be wielding a broom, and tractors, excavators, mini-diggers and agricultural vehicles drive through the still-flooded streets, offering assistance to anyone in need.

“The solidarity shown by people here in Utiel was amazing – and people risked their lives to save others,” says Ricardo Gabaldón, who has been mayor of the city for 18 months. He sits sleepless and anxious in his city hall office and is still noticeably relieved that he gave the order to close Utiel's schools first on Tuesday.

“Six people died here, almost all of them were old and had limited mobility,” he says. “But there could have been hundreds of deaths here. Hundreds. The people who come to school from surrounding villages were either hit while they were sitting in their cars or the children were at school when the water came.”

Gabaldón's priorities include restoring power to parts of the city, ensuring there is enough water for everyone and helping the hundreds of people who have lost their homes, cars and livelihoods.

The economic and emotional recovery will take a long time. Aleixandre's sister Carmen is still trying to process the events as she sweeps the water out of her parents' house.

“I can’t tell you what happened here,” she says. “I just don't have the words to describe it.” Her brother, in turn, keeps remembering something his rescuers told him early Wednesday.

“This was all new to us, but the UME handles disasters. But when they took us out here on the boat, they told us that they had never seen anything like this in Spain. Always.”