VALENCIA – Tens of thousands of Spaniards marched in the eastern city of Valencia on Saturday to demand the resignation of the regional president in charge of the emergency response to last week’s catastrophic floods that left more than 200 dead and others missing.
A group of protestors clashed with riot police in front of Valencia's city hall, where the protestors started their march to the seat of the regional government. Police used batons to beat them back.
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Regional leader Carlos Mazón is under immense pressure after his administration failed to issue flood alerts to citizens’ cellphones until hours after the flooding started on the night of Oct. 29.
Many marchers held up homemade signs or chanted “Mazón Resign!” Others carried signs with messages like “You Killed Us!” Upon arrival at the regional government seat, some protesters slung mud on the building and left handprints of the muck on its facade.
Earlier on Saturday, Mazón told regional broadcaster À Punt that “there will be time to hold officials accountable,” but that now “is time to keep cleaning our streets, helping people and rebuilding.”
He said that he “respected” the march.
Mazón, of the conservative Popular Party, is also being criticized for what people perceive as the slow and chaotic response to the natural disaster. Thousands of volunteers were the first boots on the ground in many of the hardest hit areas on Valencia’s southern outskirts. It took days for officials to mobilize the thousands of police reinforcements and soldiers that the regional government asked central authorities to send in.
In Spain, regional governments are charged with handling civil protection and can ask the national government in Madrid, led by the Socialists, for extra resources.
Mazón has defended his handling of the crisis saying that its magnitude was unforeseeable and that his administration didn’t receive sufficient warnings from central authorities.
But Spain’s weather agency issued a red alert, the highest level of warning, for bad weather as early as 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning as the disaster loomed.
Some communities were flooded by 6 p.m. It took until after 8 p.m. for Mazón’s administration to send out alerts to people’s cellphones.
Mazón was with Spain’s royals and Socialist prime minister when they were pelted with mud by enraged residents during their first visit to a devastated area last weekend.
Sara Sánchez Gurillo attended the protest because she had lost her brother-in-law, 62-year-old Candido Molina Pulgarín. She said his body was found in a field of orange trees after he was trapped by the water in his home in the town of Cheste, west of Valencia.
She wanted Mazón to go, but also had harsh words for the country's leaders.
“It’s shameful what has happened,” Sánchez said. “They knew that the sky was going to fall and yet they didn’t warn anyone. They didn’t evacuate the people. We want them to resign!”
“The central government should have taken charge. They should have sent in the army earlier. The king should have made them send it in. Why do we want him as a symbolic figure? He is worthless. The people are alone. They have abandoned us.”
The death toll stood at 220 victims on Saturday, with 212 coming in the eastern Valencia region, as the search for bodies goes on.
Thousands more lost their homes and streets are still covered in mud and debris 11 days since the arrival of a tsunami-like wave following a record deluge.
___ Joseph Wilson reported from Barcelona.