PAIPORTA, Spain--Hundreds of residents of a Valencia suburb badly hit by last week's deadly floods protested on Sunday during a visit by Spanish King Felipe, Queen Letizia, and Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, with some throwing mud at them.
Chanting "Murderers, murderers!" they vented pent-up anger over what has been widely perceived by local residents as tardy alerts from the authorities about the dangers of Tuesday's flooding, and then a late response by the emergency services when disaster struck. "Please, the dead are still in the garages, the families are looking for their relatives and friends. Please come, we only ask for help ... All we wanted was to be warned and we would have been saved," yelled one resident, Nuria Chisber, with tears in her eyes.
"It was known and nobody did anything to avoid it," a young man told the king, who insisted on staying to talk to people despite the turmoil, while the prime minister had quickly withdrawn. Spain is a parliamentary monarchy where the king is head of state. At one point in the visit to the stricken suburb of Paiporta, Felipe, wearing a simple dark raincoat, distinguishable from distance by his height and grey hair, held to his shoulder a man who was crying. Online footage showed his wife, Letizia, crying as she hugged some residents. Her hair and face had traces of mud and one of her bodyguards had blood on his face, apparently from a hurled object.
Bodyguards had opened umbrellas to try to protect the royals. The death toll from the country's worst flash floods in modern history edged higher to 217 on Sunday - almost all in the Valencia region and over 60 of them in Paiporta alone. Some of Sunday's protesters wore clothing with the symbols of far-right organisations which often stage protests against the leftist government.
"We are not going to get sidetracked by some marginal acts," Sanchez said, referring to the incidents and the need to repair damage caused by the flood. Photos showed his official car with windows broken. As the king tried to calm the mood, he also referred to attempts by agitators to destabilise the situation. "There is a lot of toxic information going around and a lot of people interested in chaos," he told the crowd. As it started drizzling, police cars with loudspeakers drove around Valencia warning of more heavy rains coming later on Sunday.
The central government has said issuing alerts to the population is the responsibility of regional authorities. But the Valencia authorities have said they acted as best as they could with the information available to them.
