Fire officers, municipal workers and local people have been working over the weekend to try to restore some sort of normality in the Malaga district of Campanillas, that suffered serious flash flooding on Saturday morning after the river of the same name broke its banks.

Downpours left dozens of homes, business and garages flooded, trapping residents inside. One woman was injured in a fall caused by the collapse of a drain and numerous vehicles were damaged after being dragged along by the metre-deep river of water and mud that rushed through the neighbourhood. One car vehicle even ended up inside a bank.

Despite work to pump out water and clean up the mud over the weekend, the Francisco de Quevedo primary school and Torre del Prado secondary school were unable to open their doors on Monday, leaving 750 children without classes.

Sole Serrano is the owner of the florist's Liantry, one of the businesses most affected by the water that invaded the central Calle Camoens. "Now we have to start again from scratch; the water has taken everything we had," she said on Sunday.

The marks on the walls of her shop show that the water and mud reached a metre in height; the force of the flood broke the shop window and knocked over the huge cooler.

At the other end of Campanillas in Calle Cristobalina Fernández, water invaded the basements of all the houses, moved furniture and swept along all the vehicles in its path.

After 24 hours of cleaning, with hardly a break to rest, Ismael Fontalba carefully wipes the mud off a Singer sewing machine, a family heirloom that belonged to his grandmother and one of the few items from his basement storeroom that he had been able to salvage.

The flood, which he described as a "giant wave", took a lifetime's worth of memories, as well as his new BMW.

Rainfall figures show that the nearby Casasola reservoir received 112mm of rainfall in 12 hours. According to State Meteorology Agency, Aemet, 68mm were recorded at its nearest station to Campanillas, in El Cónsul, of which 34mm fell in one hour and 13mm in just ten minutes. The weather station at Malaga Airport measured 36mm in one hour and 21mm in 10 minutes.