The visit this Sunday of the King and Queen, the President of the Government and the head of the Consell to PaiportaThe visit to Paiporta, ground zero of the catastrophic floods of last Tuesday in the province of Valencia, led to altercations that included shouting, insults and mud thrown at the retinue.. The indignation of the neighbors for what they interpret as institutional abandonment and neglect in the situation they are living in exploded with moments of great tension in which they came to fear for the safety of the authorities. In fact, Pedro Sánchez left the visit when his escort activated the protocol, while Felipe VI and Doña Letizia, as well as Carlos Mazón, remained surrounded by the victims. who showed their enormous anger and despair.
It all started around 13.00 hours, when the procession entered Mestre Palau street in this town in the south of the metropolitan area of Valencia. A mob pounced on them throwing mud at them shouting “murderers”.. The bodyguards created a cordon around the monarchs.
to protect them and opened their umbrellas to avoid the rain of mud, something they could not do at all, since the Kings ended up stained. It was then, in the midst of a tumult marked by strong tension and anger, that Sanchez was evacuated and an escort of the monarchs was injured with a gash on his head..
“We could have been warned and they didn’t warn us,” a neighbor collapsed before the queen, “that’s why this has happened.” “Many deaths, many deaths,” she lamented,
while Doña Letizia wiped away tears. “Three days for the Army to arrive, we have no clothes, we have no food, we have nothing,” two women assured the queen, to whom they expressed that they were being “lied to.” Letiziavisibly overcome by the situation, confessed: “You are right”..
In another group, the president of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazónstood behind the king with a low profile and a straight face, listening to chants that called for his
resignation. Then, in just a couple of minutes, the neighbors cornered the authorities forming a circle around him and every time the king tried to continue walking forward, many tried to cut him off with shovels in hand. “Children have died, it’s not like the pandemic!
That they were old people, children!” cried one man.
At that moment, in the midst of an increasingly hostile atmosphere, four Mounted Police officers arrived to separate the demonstrators, lo
which unleashed even more general nervousness due to the agitated attitude of the horses.. After almost half an hour of tension and shouting, the authorities retreated to the cars that were waiting for them a few meters behind. Mazón got into one vehicle and the queen into another. The king did the same, but after a few seconds he changed his mind and said that he wanted to speak with the
demonstrators, specifically with one to whom he pointed. Some were crying inconsolably and others were insulting him.. Thus, they passed inside the cordon formed by fifty security agents and the monarch was embraced by some of the neighbors.
Many of the demonstrators agreed that the retinue of authorities had gone to Paiporta “to have their photo taken” and that “it was not the day” almost a week after the tragedy, when many have not yet been able to remove the mud or the mountains of belongings from their streets. Felipe VI, after patiently listening to them, repeated “I understand” or “we do what we can do”..
After the altercations of Paiporta, the visit to Chivathe second town affected that the King and Queen had planned to visit, was suspended by joint agreement of the authorities, although the Town Council received the “commitment” from the King and Queen that they will visit the town “soon”.. The monarchs presided together with Sánchez and Mazón the Cecopi meeting at the Emergency Coordination Center of the Generalitat in l’Eliana (Valencia), where they were informed of the rescue work, debris removal and care for the victims, as well as of the declaration of the red level by heavy rains during the afternoon of Sunday in the south coast of the province.
The king, in a brief address of thanks to the center’s workers, said that. one must understand “the anger and frustration” of many
people, because of “how bad they have had it” and because of the difficulty in understanding how the mechanisms to deal with emergencies work. “We must give them hope, attend to the emergency, but also guarantee them that the State, in all its fullness, is present,” stressed the monarch, who expressed his conviction that the situation “will get better every day.” “Thank you for the effort. I know these are exhausting days,
that there are no hours, no minutes and a lot of need.
to attend to. Courage, go ahead,” he concluded.
On the other hand, the President of the Government rejected “any
type of violence”. “We are not going to deviate despite what may happen with some absolutely marginal violent people.”Pedro Sánchez affirmed, because the citizens of Valencia and Spain, he said, want to “look forward, to move their lives forward with an enormous gesture of responsibility and solidarity”. For his part, Mazón said he understood the “social indignation” and added: “Of course, I stay to receive it.. It is my political and moral obligation”, and defined as “exemplary” the attitude of the head of state.
From the opposition, the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóothanked the monarchs for “always being at the service of the Spanish people” and agreed that “they are always at the service of the Spanish people”.
described their behavior as “exemplary”. Government’s investiture partners such as Podemos see “normal” the citizen’s anger for “organizing official visits” while the aid “does not arrive”, in words of
Ione Belarra. While the leader of Junts, Carles Puigdemontwrote in networks: “Muddy up to the Crown, they will march with their tails between their legs”.