Cuba was left reeling Thursday after a fierce Category 3 hurricane ripped across the island and knocked out the country's power grid.

The magnitude of the impact remained unclear through the early hours of the day, but forecasters warned that Hurricane Rafael could bring "life-threatening" storm surges, winds and flash floods to Cuba after ravaging parts of the Cayman Islands and Jamaica.

A crowd of enraged survivors hurled clots of mud left by storm-spawned flooding at the Spanish royal couple during their first visit to the center of their nation's deadliest natural disaster in living memory.

Spain's national broadcaster reported that the barrage included a few rocks and other objects and that two bodyguards were treated for injuries. One could be seen with a bloody wound on his forehead.

The recurrent storms in eastern Spain that led to massive flooding last week and killed at least 217 people, mostly near Valencia, dumped rain on Barcelona on Monday, prompting authorities to suspend commuter rail service.

Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente said he was suspending all commuter trains in northeast Catalonia, a region with 8 million people, on request from civil protection officials.

At least 52 people have died in eastern Spain after flash floods swept away cars, turned village streets into rivers and disrupted rail lines and highways in the worst natural disaster to hit the European nation in recent memory.

Emergency services in the eastern region of Valencia confirmed a death toll of 51 people on Wednesday. The central government office for Castilla La Mancha region added that an 88-year-old woman was found dead in the city of Cuenca.

Global environmental leaders gather Monday in Cali, Colombia to assess the world's plummeting biodiversity levels and commitments by countries to protect plants, animals and critical habitats.

The two-week United Nations Biodiversity Conference, or COP16, is a follow-up to the 2022 Montreal meetings where 196 countries signed a historic global treaty to protect biodiversity.