Crowd hurls mud and insults at Spain royals, PM on visit to flood-hit town
Al Jazeera
Angry demonstrations over Spain’s flood response interrupt king’s visit to stricken Valencia suburb.
Hundreds of residents of a Valencia suburb badly hit by last week’s deadly floods have protested during a visit by Spanish King Felipe, Queen Letizia, and Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, with some demonstrators throwing mud at them.
Chanting “Murderers, murderers!” on Sunday, they vented 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, the Reuters news agency reported.
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.
