VALENCIA, Spain (AP) — Spain’s King Felipe VI and top government officials were pelted with mud by a crowd of enraged flood survivors during the first visit by the country’s leaders Sunday to the epicenter of the nation’s deadliest natural disaster in living memory.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez 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.
“Get out! Get out!” and “Killers!” the crowd shouted among other insults. Bodyguards opened umbrellas to protect the royals and officials from the barrage of muck.
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.
“They knew it, they knew it, and yet they did nothing,” one young man shouted at the king while waving a finger in his face.
One young woman swatted a bodyguard with a long pole.
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 the haphazard management of the crisis came to a boil on Sunday.
Queen Letizia and regional Valencia President Carlo Mazón were also in the contingent. The queen had small glops of mud on her hands and arms as she spoke to women.
“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. Internet and mobile phone coverage remains patchy. Most people only got power back on Saturday. The neighborhood’s stores and supermarkets are in ruins.
Paiporta, population 30,000, still has many city blocks completely clogged with piles of detritus, countless totaled cars and a ubiquitous layer of mud.
Over 200 people have died from Tuesday’s floods and thousands have had their homes destroyed by the tsunami-like wave.
Indignation at the management the disaster started after the initial shock wore off.
The floods had already hit Paiporta when the regional officials issued an alert to mobile phones. It sounded two hours too late.
And more anger has been fueled 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 Mazón, whose administration is in charge of civil protection, and “Where is Pedro Sánchez?”
Felipe insisted on trying to speak 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 raincoat.
According to a journalist for Spanish broadcaster RTVE who was near Felipe, one woman wept and told him she didn’t have food or diapers while another person said “don’t abandon us.”
But after approximately half an hour of tension, the monarchs got in officials 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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