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A crowd of enraged survivors hurled clots of the mud left by storm-spawned flooding at the Spanish royal couple — King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia — on Sunday during their first visit to the epicentre of their nation’s deadliest natural disaster in living memory.
Spain’s national broadcaster reported the barrage included a few rocks and other objects, and that two bodyguards were treated for injuries. One could be seen with a bloody wound on his forehead.
It was an unprecedented incident for a royal house that carefully crafts the image of monarchs adored by their country of more than 48 million people.
The fury had been unleashed against a state that appears overwhelmed and unable to meet the needs of people used to living under an effective government.
Officials also rushed Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez from the scene soon after his contingent started to walk the mud-covered streets of one of the hardest-hit areas, where over 60 people perished and thousands of lives were shattered. The disaster fuelled by climate change killed at least 205 people in eastern Spain.
“Get out! Get out!” and “Killers!” the crowd in the town of Paiporta shouted, among other insults. Bodyguards opened umbrellas to protect the royals and other officials from the tossed muck.
Police had to step in, with some officers on horseback, to keep back the crowd of several dozen, some wielding shovels and poles.
Letizia broke into tears sympathetically after speaking to several people, including one woman who wept in her arms.
But even after being forced to seek protection, Felipe, with flecks of mud on his face, remained calm and made several efforts to speak to individual residents. He 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.
Still, one woman smacked an official car with an umbrella and another kicked it before it sped off.
While far from awakening the passion that the British hold for their royals, public events by Felipe and Letizia are usually greeted by crowds of fans.
Felipe, 56, took the throne after his father, Juan Carlos, abdicated in 2014 after he was tarnished by self-made financial and personal scandals. Felipe immediately cut a new figure, renouncing his personal inheritance and increasing the financial transparency of his royal house. He and Letizia, a 52-year-old former journalist, dedicate a significant part of their public agenda to cultural and scientific causes.
Visits to sites of national tragedies are also part of the royal duties for monarchs, who are seen as a stabilizing force in a parliamentary monarchy restored following the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.
But the public rage over the haphazard management of the flooding crisis has been building. Felipe heard some jeers when he took part in a tribute to victims of a deadly 2017 terror attack in Barcelona, but that was nothing compared to Sunday’s reception.
Letizia had small glops of mud on her hands and arms as she spoke to women.
“We don’t have any water,” one woman told her.
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. Stores and supermarkets are in ruins and Paiporta, with a population of 30,000, still has many city blocks completely clogged with piles of detritus, countless totalled cars and a ubiquitous layer of mud.
Thousands have had their homes destroyed by a tsunami-like wave of muck and indignation at mismanagement of the disaster has begun.
The floods had already hit Paiporta when the regional officials issued an alert to mobile phones. It sounded two hours too late.
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.
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 Sunday included demands aimed at regional Valencia President Carlo Mazon, whose administration is in charge of civil protection, to step down, as well as “Where is Pedro Sanchez?”
“I understand the indignation and of course I stayed to receive it,” Mazon said on X. “It was my moral and political obligation. The attitude of the king this morning was exemplary.”
Spanish national broadcaster RTVE reported that the barrage aimed at the royals included a few rocks and other hard objects were tossed and that two bodyguards were treated for injuries, and the monarchs and officials called off another stop Sunday at a second hard-hit village, Chiva, about half an hour to the east of Valencia city.