Furious crowd chant ‘murderer’ at Spanish King Felipe in Valencia visit – latest

An expat teacher living south of Valencia in Spain says he is unable to leave his town due to being “surrounded by water” following flash flooding in the region.

John Fahy, 55, who lives in a seaside town called Cullera, also reported there being no food in the supermarkets, with no new supplies expected for a while.

“We can’t leave our town because it’s flooded all around,” he said.

“There’s no-one in the shops in Cullera because there’s no food and there won’t be for a while.”

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“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king, who insisted on staying to talk to people despite the turmoil, while the prime minister Pedro Sanchez had quickly withdrawn.

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Spain’s Mediterranean coast is used to autumn storms that can cause flooding, but this episode was the most powerful flash flood event in recent memory.

Older people in Paiporta, at the epicenter of the tragedy, say Tuesday’s floods were three times as bad as those in 1957, which caused at least 81 deaths. That episode led to the diversion of the Turia watercourse, which meant that a large part of the town was spared of these floods.

Valencia suffered two other major DANAs in the 1980s, one in 1982 with around 30 deaths, and another one five years later that broke rainfall records.

The flash floods also surpassed the flood that swept away a campsite along the Gallego river in Biescas, in the northeast, killing 87 people, in August 1996

Dubbed “the flood of the century”, rainfall on Tuesday saw wide swathes of southern and eastern Spain completely destroyed by torrents of muddy water.

With cars tumbling down streets in Valencia and village roads turned to rivers, the army was drafted in to assist in the ongoing rescue operation.

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The storms concentrated over the Magro and Turia river basins and, in the Poyo riverbed, produced walls of water that overflowed riverbanks, catching people unaware as they went on with their daily lives on Tuesday evening and early Wednesday.

In the blink of an eye, the muddy water covered roads and railways, and entered houses and businesses in towns and villages on the southern outskirts of Valencia city. Drivers had to take shelter on car roofs, while residents took refuge on higher ground.

Spain’s national weather service said that in the hard-hit locality of Chiva, it rained more in eight hours than it had in the preceding 20 months, calling the deluge “extraordinary.” Other areas on the southern outskirts of Valencia city didn’t get rain before they were wiped out by the wall of water that overflowed the drainage canals.

When authorities sent alerts to mobile phones warning of the seriousness of the flooding and asking people to stay at home, many were already on the road, working or covered in water in low-lying areas or underground garages, which became death traps.

More anger has been fueled 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 on Sunday included demands aimed at regional Valencia President Carlo Mazïn, 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,” Mazïn said on X. “It was my moral and political obligation. The attitude of the king this morning was exemplary.”

Irene Cuevas will never forget the sound of the waves crashing below her apartment’s balcony.

If only there had been a flash of lightning in the darkness to let her glimpse what sounded like a roaring sea.

“It was a constant fear because we didn’t have light to see by,” Cuevas told The Associated Press. “We could hear the roar of the waves, which was unbelievable. The street was completely flooded and we were hoping for some lightning so that we could at least see what situation we were in. It was all waves, currents everywhere.

“We have that sound of the waves burned in our memory.”

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While far from awakening the passion that the British hold for their royals, Felipe and Letizia’s public events are usually greeted by crowds of fans.

The 56-year-old Felipe took the throne when 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 the 52-year-old Letizia, a 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 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 crisis has been building. Felipe heard some jeers when he took part in a tribute to the dead of a deadly 2017 terror attack in Barcelona, but that was nothing comparable to Sunday’s reception.