King Felipe snaps at local after mud attack while seeing flood victims,
Spain’s King Felipe was seen snapping at Valencian locals who screamed and threw mud at him and his wife as they visited the region in the wake of the devastating floods that have so far killed 217.
The monarchs had mud thrown at them by angry survivors of the floods that killed more than 200 people, including three British citizens, as they walked through the muddy streets in Paiporta, one of the hardest-hit towns on the outskirts of Valencia.
Queen Letizia could be seen with mud speckled over her face, while one of the bodyguards escorting the royals in Paiporta had seemingly been hit by an object as he had a cut on his forehead, which caused blood to run down his face.
The crowd shouted ‘murderers’ and other insults at the royals and government officials including Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez during the visit on Sunday.
At one point, the crowd was so close they were able to have full conversations with the King. After a Valencian screamed at him, he said in response: ‘If you want, I won’t come and I’ll stay in Madrid.’
Police had to step in, with some officers on horseback to keep back the crowd of several dozens.
Bodyguards opened umbrellas to protect the royal visitors and officials as protesters hurled mud at them. At least two of them were injured.
After being forced to seek protection, the king and queen remained calm and made several efforts to speak to individual residents, while local officials – who the angry crowd had reportedly directed their wrath at – fled.
Jose Ribelles, a 23-year-old supermarket worker whose life had been upended by the flood, told the Times: ‘What do you expect? For us to tell him sweet nothings?’
He accused the Spanish state of not doing enough to support victims of the flood.
‘They wanted to kill us. The first thing you have to do is warn people when a dam is about to be overwhelmed and broken.
‘You can’t warn people when they are already drowning.’
He said he witnessed several dead bodies in the supermarket he worked at.
‘There were 12 deaths among my colleagues. The flood got them in the garage.’
His friend, 20-year-old Francisco Javier Molina, added: ‘The king and all came very clean and to look good in front of the town and cameras but this doesn’t help us at all. He should come here and get rid of the mud and the dead that are in garages. And then he’ll be one of us.’
The king and queen spent an hour trying to calm tempers before leaving themselves.
Though they were meant to visit another nearby town, Chiva, they ‘postponed the visit’, fearing another similar reception.
Chiva citizens reportedly shouted ‘cowards’ at the absent monarchs. One woman who lives there, Maria Tarin, told the Times: ‘The king can shove it but it’s the Valencian government head Carlos Mazon and Pedro Sanchez who are to blame.
‘Better that they didn’t come because it wouldn’t have ended well for them.’
Both Sanchez and Mazon had left the town of Paiporta quickly left, not before the rear window of the premier’s vehicle was broken.
‘I understand the social anger and of course, I’m here to receive it. This is my political and moral obligation,’ Mazon later said in a post on X, while calling the king’s conduct ‘exemplary’.
Isabel Diaz Ayuso, president of the community government in Madrid, echoed the praise for the King and added that Queen Letizia embodied ‘the sentiment of Spain’.
The extraordinary scenes underscored the depth of the anger in the country over the response to the nation’s worst such disaster in decades, with the death toll rising over 200 and hopes for finding survivors ebbing five days on.
Almost all the deaths have been in the Valencia region, where thousands of security and emergency services frantically cleared debris and mud in the search for bodies.
Describing ‘the worst natural disaster in the recent history of our country,’ Sanchez said it was the second deadliest flood in Europe this century.
Indignation at the management of Spain’s worst natural disaster in living memory started after the initial shock wore off.
The floods had already started filling Paiporta with crushing waves when regional officials issued an alert to mobile phones that sounded two hours too late.
And more anger has been fuelled by the inability of officials to respond quickly in the aftermath.
Most of the clean-up of the layers and layers of mud and debris that has invaded countless homes has been carried out by residents and thousands of volunteers.
‘We have lost everything!’ someone shouted.
Felipe insisted on trying to speak with people as he continued his visit. He spoke to several people, patting two young men on their backs and sharing a quick embrace, with mud stains on his black raincoat.
According to a journalist for Spanish broadcaster RTVE, one woman wept and told the king she did not have food and nappies, while another person said: ‘Don’t abandon us.’
After more than half an hour of tension, the monarch and the rest of the delegation got into official cars and left with a mounted police escort.
Sanchez later said while he empathised with the ‘anguish and suffering’ of the victims, he condemned ‘all forms of violence’.
The government had accepted the Valencia region leader’s request for 5,000 more troops and informed Sanchez of a further deployment of 5,000 police and civil guards, the premier said.
Spain was carrying out its largest deployment of military and security force personnel in peacetime, he added.
Restoring order and distributing aid to destroyed towns and villages – some of which have been cut off from food, water and power since Tuesday’s torrent – is a priority.
Authorities have come under fire over the warning systems before the floods, and some stricken residents have complained the response to the disaster is too slow.
‘I am aware the response is not enough, there are problems and severe shortages… towns buried by mud, desperate people searching for their relatives… we have to improve,’ Sanchez said.
In the ground-zero towns of Alfafar and Sedavi, reporters saw no soldiers while residents shovelled mud from their homes and firefighters pumped water from garages and tunnels.
‘Thank you to the people who have come to help us, to all of them, because from the authorities, nothing,’ a furious Estrella Caceres, 66, told AFP in Sedavi.
Authorities in the Valencia region have restricted access to roads for two days to allow emergency services to carry out search, rescue and logistics operations more effectively.
With telephone and transport networks severely damaged, establishing a precise figure of missing people is difficult.
Sanchez said electricity had been restored to 94 percent of homes affected by power outages and that around half of the cut telephone lines had been repaired.
Some motorways have reopened but local and regional roads resembled a ‘Swiss cheese’, meaning certain places would probably remain inaccessible by land for weeks, Transport Minister Oscar Puente told El Pais daily.
Ordinary citizens carrying food, water and cleaning equipment continued their grassroots initiative to assist the recovery on Saturday.
Around 1,000 set off from the Mediterranean coastal city of Valencia towards nearby towns laid waste by the floods, an AFP journalist saw.
‘There’s nothing left,’ Mario Silvestre, a resident in the ruined town of Chiva, told AFP on seeing the damage.
‘Politicians promise a lot. Help will come when it comes,’ said the octogenarian.
Authorities have urged people to stay at home to avoid congestion on the roads that would hamper the work of emergency services.
Regional leader Carlos Mazon called the floods ‘the worst moment in our history’ on Saturday and laid out a series of proposals to help his region recover, ranging from infrastructure to economic support.
He is due to visit flood-hit areas along with the royals and Sanchez on Sunday, Spanish news agency EFE reported.
The storm that sparked the floods on Tuesday formed as cold air moved over the warm waters of the Mediterranean and is common for this time of year.
But scientists warn climate change driven by human activity is increasing the ferocity, length and frequency of such extreme weather events.
Emergency services late Saturday issued an updated of toll of 213 people confirmed killed – 210 in the Valencia region, two in neighbouring Castilla-La Mancha and one in Andalusia in the south.
Authorities have warned the toll could yet rise, as vehicles trapped in tunnels and underground car parks are cleared.
