Angry survivors booed and threw eggs at Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia as they visited the Valencia region, where more than 200 people have died in devastating floods.
Footage showed the king making his way down a pedestrian street, before his bodyguards and police were suddenly overwhelmed by a surge of protesters, hurling insults and screaming.
The associated Press reported that a crowd of enraged survivors hurled clots of mud left by storm-spawned flooding at the Spanish royal couple on Sunday during their first visit to the center of their nation’s deadliest natural disaster in living memory.
Spain’s national broadcaster reported that 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.
Manaure Quintero/AFP/Getty Images
“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.
Shouts of “murderer” and “shame” were directed at the royal couple, Spain’s prime minister and other leaders as they walked through the town of Paiporta – one of the worst-affected in the region.
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and the head of Valencian regional government, Carlos Mazón, joined the royal couple on the visit, but were swiftly evacuated as the crowd grew increasingly hostile.
Spanish media reports that objects were hurled at Sánchez, while footage verified by the BBC appears to show stones being thrown at his car as he was driven away. After he left, the crowd chanted: “Where is Sánchez?”
With mud on their faces and clothes, King Felipe and Queen Letizia were later seen consoling members of the crowd.
Six days after terrifying floods razed towns in eastern Spain and killed at least 214 people, frustration at the government’s response is mounting, even as Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez promised to “improve” recovery efforts with the deployment of 10,000 soldiers and police officers.
