PAIPORTA (Reuters): Hundreds of residents of a Valencia suburb particularly badly hit by last week’s deadly floods protested on Sunday during a visit by Spanish King Felipe, Queen Letizia, and Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, with some throwing mud at them.
Chanting “Murderers, murderers!” they vented pent-up anger over what has been widely perceived by local residents as tardy alerts from the authorities about the dangers of Tuesday’s flooding, and then a late response by the emergency services when disaster struck.
“It was known and nobody did anything to avoid it,” a young man told the king, who insisted on staying to talk to the people despite the turmoil, while the prime minister had quickly withdrawn.
Spain is a parliamentary monarchy where the king is head of state.
At one point in the visit to the stricken suburb of Paiporta, Felipe, wearing a simple dark raincoat, distinguishable from afar by his height and grey hair, held a man who was crying on his shoulder.
Online footage showed his wife, Letizia, crying as she hugged some residents. Her hair and face had traces of mud and one of her bodyguards had blood on his face, apparently from a hurled object. Bodyguards had opened umbrellas to try to protect the royals.
The central government has said issuing alerts to the population is the responsibility of regional authorities. The Valencia authorities have said they acted as best as they could with the information available to them.
Sanchez said on Saturday that any potential negligence would be investigated later and called for political unity in the face of the tragedy.
Valencia’s regional leader Carlos Mazon, who also visited Paiporta to boos and insults from protesters, posted on X: “I understand the public anger and of course I will stay to receive it. It is my political and moral obligation. The King’s attitude this morning has been exemplary.”
The death toll from the country’s worst flash floods in modern history edged higher to 217 on Sunday – almost all in the Valencia region and over 60 of them in Paiporta alone.
Dozens of people were still unaccounted for, while some 3,000 households still had no electricity, officials said.
Thousands of additional troops and police joined the disaster relief effort over the weekend in the largest such peacetime operation in Spain.
The floods engulfed streets and lower floors of buildings, and swept away cars and bits of masonry in tides of mud.
The tragedy is already Europe’s worst flood-related disaster in a single country since 1967 when at least some 500 people died in Portugal.
Scientists say extreme weather events are becoming more frequent in Europe, and elsewhere, due to climate change. Meteorologists think the warming of the Mediterranean, which increases water evaporation, plays a key role in making torrential rains more severe.
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