Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero travelled to Lorca to visit the most devastated areas and join an open-air funeral mass for nine victims of Wednesday's earthquake, along with Crown Prince Felipe and his wife Letizia.
Two days of mourning have been declared for those who perished when the quake tore down walls and sent chunks of masonry and bricks flying into the streets. Some buildings were flattened.
A child was among those killed.
The Red Cross said the quake forced some 15,000 of the city's 93,000 inhabitants from their homes.
Thousands spent their second night away from their residences.
But unlike Thursday, when they shivered under blankets outdoors, most were able to sleep in hundreds of tents supplied by the Red Cross and the military.
The Red Cross admitted they still lacked enough fold-up canvas beds for all the homeless, many of them poor immigrants from Latin America and north Africa unable to find alternative lodging.
'We had to treat many who were suffering from the cold as they slept in the open air,' said Enrique Garcia, a Red Cross coordinator.
The 5.1-magnitude earthquake struck at 6.47pm last Wednesday at a depth of just 10km, coming nearly two hours after a smaller 4.4-magnitude quake.
Ripping open walls, toppling roofs and crushing cars under tumbling stones, the tremor injured another 130 people, regional emergency services chief Luis Gestoso said.
Bulldozers cleared streets filled with stones, bricks, cornices, collapsed terraces and crumpled cars.
Some 20,000 buildings including many from the 16th and 17th centuries were reported damaged in Lorca, which traces its history back more than 2,000 years.
Mayor Francisco Jodar said 80% of the city's buildings suffered some damage.
The clocktower of the 17th century San Diego Church tumbled and shattered in the street, narrowly missing a television reporter as he delivered a report on Spanish public broadcaster TVE. Its bronze bell lay in the rubble.
Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said yesterday that authorities could provide 3,500 places for the night in four tent camps. 'If necessary, we can add another 1,500 places,' he said.
The Spanish government has sent in 800 military and police, equipped with 140 vehicles to help clear the debris.
Emergency workers are checking building by building to decide which can be repaired and which will have to be demolished.
The president of Spain's College of Geologists, Luis Suarez, said the quake released energy equal to 200 tonnes of TNT and he expected the intensity of aftershocks to diminish.
He blamed structural weaknesses in the buildings and sandy soil for exacerbating the damages.
Mr Zapatero and his conservative Popular Party opponent Mariano Rajoy have agreed to suspend campaigning for regional elections on 22 May because of the disaster.
It was the deadliest earthquake in Spain since 19 April 1956, when a tremor wrecked buildings and killed 11 people in Albolote, a town in the southern Spanish province of Granada.
