Spain’s King Felipe VI and top government officials were pelted with mud by enraged flood survivors on Sunday during the first visit by the country’s leaders to the centre of the suffering.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was evacuated from the scene, according to Spanish broadcaster RTVE, when the official 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.
Police had to step in with some officers on horseback to keep back the crowd of several dozens who hurled mud and wielded shovels and poles threateningly in the air.
“Get out! Get out!” and “Killers!” the crowd shouted among other insults. Bodyguards opened umbrellas to protect the royals and officials as protesters hurled mud at them.
After being forced to seek protection, the king, with flecks of mud on his face, remained calm and 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 takes great care to craft an image of a monarch who is liked by the nation.
But the public rage over for the haphazard management of the crisis came to a boil on Sunday.
Queen Letizia and regional Valencia President Carlo Mazon were also in the contingent. The queen also spoke to women with small glops of mud on her hands and arms.
“We don’t have any water,” one woman told the queen.
Many people still don’t have drinking water five days after the floods struck. Paiporta, population 30,000, still has many city blocks completely clogged with piles of detritus, countless totalled cars and mud.
Over 200 people have died from Tuesday’s floods and thousands have had their homes destroyed by the wall of water and mud.
The worst flood-related disaster to hit Spain in more than five decades has killed more than 200 people, and dozens were still unaccounted for, four days after torrential rains swept the eastern region of Valencia, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said on Saturday.
Indignation over the management of Spain’s worst natural disaster in living memory started after the initial shock wore off.
The floods had started filling Paiporta with crushing waves when the 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 to the aftermath. Most of the cleanup of the layers and layers of mud and debris that has invaded countless homes has been done by residents and thousands of volunteers.
“We have lost everything!” someone shouted.
Shouts included demands for Mazon, whose administration is in charge of civil protection, and “Where is Pedro Sanchez?”
Felipe insisted on trying to dialogue with people as he tried to continue 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 rain coat.
According to a journalist for Spanish broadcaster RTVE near Felipe, one woman wept and told him she didn’t have food and diapers while another person said, “Don’t abandon us.”
After approximately half an hour of tension, the monarchs got into cars and left with a mounted police escort.
One woman smacked an official car with an umbrella, and another kicked it, before it sped off.
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