By David Melero and Joseph Wilson
Valencia: Mud and insults were hurled at Spain’s King Felipe VI when he visited one of the towns hardest hit by recent flooding.
Police had to step in to keep the crowd back as locals in Paiporta, on the outskirts of Valencia, shouted abuse at the monarch and government officials who were accompanying him.
“Get out! Get out!” and “Killers!” rang out among the insults. Bodyguards opened umbrellas to protect the royal entourage as protesters launched mud their way.
After seeking protection from the mud, the king, remaining calm, made several efforts to speak to individual residents. One person appeared to have wept on his shoulder. He shook the hand of a man.
It was an unprecedented incident for a royal house that carefully crafts the image of monarchs adored by their country of more than 48 million people.
Spain’s King Felipe VI (left) was heckled and had mud thrown at him when he visited Paiporta on Sunday.Credit: AP
Queen Letizia and regional Valencia president Carlo Mazon were also in the contingent.
Police had to step in, some officers on horseback, to keep back the crowd of several dozen, some wielding shovels and poles.
Letizia broke into tears sympathetically after speaking to several people, including one woman who wept in her arms. Later, one of the queen’s bodyguards had a bloody wound on his forehead and there was a hole in the back window of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s official car.
Officials rushed the prime minister from the scene soon after his contingent started to walk the mud-covered streets of Paiporta, one of the hardest-hit areas, where over 60 people perished and thousands of lives were shattered. The disaster killed at least 205 people in Valencia region in the east of the country on Tuesday.
Thousands more have had their homes destroyed by water and mud, and dozens are still missing.
Indignation of the management of the worst natural disaster in Spain in living memory started after the initial shock wore off.
Queen Letizia reacts as she visits people affected by the floods.Credit: AP
The floods had started filling Paiporta with crushing waves when regional officials issued an alert to mobile phones that sounded two hours too late.
More anger was fuelled by the inability of officials to respond quickly in the aftermath. Most of the clean-up has been co-ordinated and carried out by residents and volunteers.
The central government has said that issuing alerts to the population is the responsibility of regional authorities. The Valencia authorities have said they acted as best they could with the information available to them.
Thousands of additional troops and police joined the disaster relief effort at the weekend in the largest such peacetime operation in Spain.
“It was known and nobody did anything to avoid it,” a young man told the king, who insisted on staying on to talk to people despite the turmoil, while the prime minister had withdrawn.
“We have lost everything!” someone else shouted at the king.
Paiporta is a few kilometres outside the city of Valencia, Spain’s third largest. Although it received barely any rain on October 29, it was hit by floodwaters that ripped through the town.
The aftermath of floods in Paiporta, near Valencia.Credit: AP
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.
The streets of Paiporta, near Valencia, following the flood.Credit: AP
Scientists say extreme weather events are becoming more frequent in Europe due to climate change.
Meteorologists think the warming of the Mediterranean, which increases water evaporation, plays a role in making torrential rains more severe.
AP, Bloomberg, Reuters
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