King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia were welcomed in a town in Valencia after their first trip was cut short by angry residents hurling mud and insults.
Spain’s King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia returned on Tuesday to a region devastated by recent catastrophic floods — just two weeks after angry survivors pelted them with mud and shouted profanities at them during their first visit to the disaster zone.
There was no mud-flinging this time around as the royal couple visited the town of Chiva, in the province of Valencia, where they shook hands with residents and received applause.
However, Spanish media reported that Valencia’s regional president, Carlos Mazón, who accompanied the royals, was the target of complaints and heckles by many local citizens.
Mazón and his administration have been widely criticised by the public and opposition politicians for a slow and chaotic response to the flooding in late October.
Chiva, a hilltop town some 30km to the west of Valencia city, was ripped apart by a wall of water that overflowed a normally dry gorge on 29 October. Two of the four bridges spanning the gorge were demolished and several houses were washed away. Of the 227 people who have died in the flooding overall, eight of them passed away in Chiva.
Earlier this month, the royals, Mazón and Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez visited Paiporta, a neighbourhood on Valencia’s southern outskirts and one of the hardest-hit areas with dozens of deaths.
They were greeted by an enraged crowd who hurled mud and other debris at them. The royal couple withstood the vitriol for half an hour and spoke to several furious residents, but eventually cancelled the visit and postponed a planned stop in Chiva.
The outpouring of anger in Paiporta was not directed at the royal family specifically but at the entire state for its handling of the worst natural disaster in Spain’s recent history, according to analysts, who said such fury towards King Felipe VI was unprecedented.
Last week, Mazon again rejected calls to resign as leader and told regional lawmakers in Valencia that he did everything possible in the face of a “monstrous avalanche of water that exceeded all weather forecasts”.
Clean-up efforts are still ongoing in the worst affected areas in eastern Spain, where thousands of homes and vehicles were destroyed by the flooding.
