Hundreds of people have heckled Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia, as well as the prime minister and the regional leader of Valencia – throwing mud and shouting “murderers” – as the group attempted an official visit to one of the municipalities hardest hit by the deadly floods.
The scenes playing out in Paiporta on Sunday laid bare the mounting sense of abandonment among the devastated areas and the lingering anger over why an alert urging residents not to leave home on Tuesday was sent after the flood waters began surging.
Much of the fury appeared to be directed at the elected officials, as calls rang out for the resignation of Pedro Sánchez, the country’s prime minister, and Carlos Mazón, Valencia’s regional leader.
Sánchez was swiftly evacuated as bodyguards used umbrellas to protect the group from the barrage of mud. “What were they expecting?” one furious local person asked the newspaper El País. “People are very angry. Pedro Sánchez should have been here on day one with a shovel.”
The king insisted on continuing the visit, at one point meeting a man who wept on his shoulder. He was also confronted by a young man who told him that “you’ve abandoned us”, asking why residents had been left on their own to grapple with the aftermath of the deadly floods. “You’re four days too late,” he told the king.
The man also challenged the king on why the civil protection service, which is overseen by the regional government, had sent the alert hours after the state-run weather agency had warned of deteriorating conditions. “They knew it, they knew it, and yet they did nothing,” he shouted at the monarch. “It’s a disgrace.”
Hours after the visit, King Felipe appeared to address the incident.
Speaking to officials in Valencia in a video posted online, he said: “One has to understand the anger and frustration of many people given all that they have gone through, as well as the difficulty in understanding how all the mechanisms work when it comes to the emergency operations.”
Spain’s royal palace later said that the king’s plans to visit a second hard-hit town in the region had been postponed.
The public rage came as the death toll from the floods climbed to 217. As the meteorological agency on Sunday again issued a red alert, forecasting further heavy rain in the area, mayors from the affected municipalities pleaded with officials to send help.
“We’re very angry and we’re devastated,” said Guillermo Luján, the mayor of Aldaia. “We have a town in ruins. We need to start over and I’m begging for help. Please help us.”
The town’s 33,000 residents were among many in the region grappling with the aftermath of the ferocious floods that rank as the deadliest in Spain’s modern history. The number of people missing remains unknown.
Luján said his town was in desperate need of heavy machinery to clear out the vehicles and debris piled up along the streets.
The municipality had yet to confirm the extent of the devastation, leaving Luján bracing for the worst. Aldaia has one of the region’s most visited shopping centres, with a vast underground car park that on Tuesday filled with water in a matter of minutes.
“Right now, the upper part of the centre is devastated and the lower level is a terrifying unknown,” Luján told the broadcaster RTVE. “We don’t know what we’re going to find. We want to be cautious, but we’ll see. It might be heartbreaking.”
In Paiporta, the mayor, Maribel Albalat, described the situation as desperate. Days after the town’s ravine overflowed, unleashing a deluge of water that wreaked havoc on the 29,000 inhabitants, parts of the town remain inaccessible, she said. “It’s impossible because there are bodies, there are vehicles with bodies and these have to be removed,” she told the news agency Europa Press. “Everything is very difficult.”
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Albalat said the number of deaths had climbed to 70 in the small town and was expected to climb in the coming days, as access was secured to underground garages. On Tuesday, in the absence of any sign that this storm would be different from any other, many people had gone down to their garages to move their cars to higher ground.
In flooded towns such as Alfafar and Sedaví, mayors described feeling abandoned by officials as people scrambled to shovel mud from their homes and clear streets. In some areas, people were still trying to secure an electricity supply or stable phone service.
On Friday, the catastrophic images from these municipalities led to a show of solidarity, as thousands of volunteers from less-affected areas trekked to the hardest hit carrying shovels, brooms and food supplies. On Saturday, thousands more turned up at Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences, which had been hastily converted into the nerve centre of the clean-up operation.
The mayor of Chiva, where on Tuesday nearly a year’s worth of rain fell in eight hours, said the situation was a “rollercoaster” for the 17,000 residents.
“You see sadness, which is logical given that we’ve lost our town,” Amparo Fort told reporters. “But on the other hand, it’s heartening to see the response that we’ve had from everyone … there is a real, human wave of volunteers, particularly young people.”
Sánchez said 10,000 troops and police would be deployed to help with what he described as “the worst flood our continent has seen so far this century”.
He acknowledged that help had been slow in reaching where it was most needed. “I’m aware that the response we’re mounting isn’t enough. I know that,” he said. “And I know there are severe problems and shortages and that there are still collapsed services and towns buried by the mud where people are desperately looking for their relatives, and people who can’t get into their homes, and houses that have been buried or destroyed by mud. I know we have to do better and give it our all.”
Scientists say the human-driven climate crisis is increasing the length, frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. The warming of the Mediterranean, which increases water evaporation, plays a key role in making torrential rains more severe, experts have also said.