Visiting with the Prime Minister in flood-ravaged southern Spain, King Felipe VI was heckled by angry residents. The crowd also shouted “Assassins!” to Spanish leaders during the visit. Residents believe that the authorities took time before raising the alarm. Follow the evolution of the situation live.
The main information to remember:
- King Felipe VI was heckled during his visit to southern Spain
- “Murderers!” crowd shouts at Spanish leaders visiting flood site
- The latest provisional report shows 217 deaths, including 213 in the Valencia region.
King Felipe VI heckled by angry residents
King Felipe VI of Spain and Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez were greeted Sunday with cries of “assassins!” in Paiporta, a town devastated by this week's floods, by an angry crowd who threw mud at the procession, noted AFP journalists on site. The hostility of these residents is particularly directed against the right-wing president of the Valencia region Carlos Mazón and the socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. “Mazón resign!”, “how many dead?”, “out!” shouted the crowd who accused the authorities of having abandoned them to their fate.
Faced with this anger, the king and queen of Spain left Paiporta.
According to a latest report, 217 people died in the floods, including 213 in the Valencia region alone, three in Castile-la-Mancha, where the lifeless body of a sixty-year-old woman from Letur who went missing on Tuesday was discovered on Sunday morning, and one in Andalusia. In Letur, in the province of Albacete, the body of the woman carried away by the raging waves was discovered twelve kilometers from the place of her disappearance, the government delegate in the region of Albacete said at a press conference. Castile-La Mancha, Pedro Antonio Ruiz Santos.
Among the victims of these floods are also two Chinese nationals, according to the Chinese embassy in Madrid. Two other Chinese nationals are missing. The authorities expect the toll to rise. “There are still flooded ground floors or garages, basements and parking lots to be cleared and it is foreseeable that deceased people are in these spaces,” declared the Minister of Transport, Oscar Puente, in a message on X.
According to him, the toll has changed relatively little over the past 48 hours because the emergency services first explored “the more accessible areas”, located “on the surface”. At the Vatican, Pope Francis said Sunday “pray for Valencia and other people in Spain who are suffering so much right now.” On the ground, the population remains faced with a dramatic situation, while numerous transport and telecommunications infrastructures have been destroyed or put out of service. In many communities, piles of cars and muddy debris still litter the roadways.
“We've been cleaning for three days. Everything is covered in mud,” Helena Danna Daniella, owner of a bar-restaurant in Chiva, told AFP. “It feels like the end of the world,” added this thirty-year-old, saying she was still in shock five days after the bad weather. People trapped in raging waves “were asking for help and there was nothing we could do (…) It drives you crazy. We look for answers and we can't find them.”
5,000 soldiers as reinforcements
Faced with this chaos, Mr. Sánchez announced on Saturday the sending of 5,000 additional soldiers to the region, bringing their numbers to 7,500, the “largest deployment of armed forces ever carried out in Spain in peacetime”, in his words. . In addition to these soldiers, there are 5,000 police officers and civil guards responsible for supporting their 5,000 colleagues already on the ground.
Furthermore, 20 new arrests took place on Saturday evening for acts of theft and looting, the police announced, bringing to around a hundred the total number of people arrested for such offenses since Wednesday. “We are facing the challenge of our lives,” admitted Saturday evening Mr. Mazón, the conservative president of the Valencia region, widely criticized for the delay in sending his services a telephone alert message to residents. Tuesday evening.
In the center of Valencia, spared from bad weather, thousands of residents gathered again on Sunday morning with shovels and brooms to go on foot to neighboring towns to help the victims. However, the Valencia government had decided to limit the number of volunteers authorized to go to these localities to 2,000, in order to avoid the congestion problems that the authorities faced on Friday and Saturday.
