(Bloomberg) -- The king and prime minister of Spain arrived at the scene of a national tragedy to a hostile crowd chanting “murderers” and hurling mud at them. As Felipe VI walked on and spoke to survivors, Pedro Sánchez instead slipped into his black car as protesters followed him shouting insults, kicking the tires and banging at his window.
The contrast between the two — one stayed, the other fled — was stark and the optics couldn't be more damning for the Socialist leader known as one of Europe's most cunning political survivors.
As the top institutional figures, they were visiting the devastated town of Paiporta, five days after the flash floods that killed at least 211 people in the Valencia region along the Mediterranean coast. But traveling from Madrid, 400 kilometers (248.5 miles) away, they had both misread the mood.
“Now may not have been the time” to visit, said Transport Minister Óscar Puente, speaking to broadcaster La Sexta in one of the first statements by a government official. “There is a feeling of abandonment, of help that hasn't arrived for many days.”
Anger had been building about why the authorities had been so slow to react to the disaster as regional and central governments — from opposite sides of the ideological spectrum — gave conflicting accounts over the timing of the alerts.
El president del govern espanyol, Pedro Sánchez, abandona Paiporta visiblement afectat després dels forts aldarulls al municipi de l'Horta Sud.
Vídeo cedit per: Adrián Edo Galindo
🔗 Segueix el #MinutAMinut de la #DANACV en l'enllaç de la biografia pic.twitter.com/p1l75UiPuBAs the bickering continued and the death toll climbed, thousands of volunteers stepped up where the state failed. Meanwhile apocalyptic footage of the aftermath of the torrential rains — homes submerged, cars piled on top of each other, streets strewn with debris — sat uneasily with Spain's modern image as one of the continent's best-performing economies.
One particularly unfortunate turn of phrase by Sanchez is doing the rounds on social media sites: If the Valencia government needs anything, he said, “what it needs to do is ask.” It was directed to Valencia's regional president, Carlos Mazón, at a news conference on Saturday when the prime minister announced the largest peacetime deployment of troops following criticism of the response to one of the deadliest floods in Europe this century.
But in the worst-hit places, such as Paiporta and neighboring Alfafar, it smacked of political score-settling in a broader blame game. It was also seen as too little, too late after residents were trapped alone for days without water or electricity, with mud oozing on streets and inside houses while they waited helplessly for emergency services.
The crisis puts both the toxicity of Spanish politics and its fragile system of decentralized power in the spotlight and exposes the consequences of the dysfunction at the heart of government.
Valencia is where those long-simmering tensions came to a head and the prime minister now finds himself — not for the first time — in political danger.
A year ago, when Sánchez called snap elections, his party suffered a blow by losing to the conservative opposition in the region it had historically controlled. Ultimately, Sánchez clung to power nationally by striking a controversial amnesty deal with Catalan separatists. He's not had an easy year, and flirted with the idea of resigning after his wife was accused of peddling influence.
When disaster struck in Valencia, Sánchez could have declared a state of emergency, which would have given him control over the rescue efforts and taken it from Mazón. But he chose not to. He had made use of them during the Covid pandemic only to see judges rule that he exceeded his power. It's a rarely used tool and is politically loaded.
In the US, hurricanes in Republican states such as Florida often require help from federal government and a partisan fight on relief often follows. In Spain, the antipathy between parties was similarly laid bare after a year's worth of rain fell in a single day.
The embattled prime minister cannot afford to lose the support of pro-independence lawmakers and the only example in modern Spanish history of Madrid overtly intervening in an autonomous region was when Catalonia tried to break away in 2017 and it was briefly put under oversight of the central government.
Not since 1962 had so many people died from floods in Spain, and the death toll — expected to keep rising — is already higher than the 193 killed in the 2004 train bombings by terrorists in Madrid.
“Politicians have to realize that their management is disastrous, no matter which party they belong to,” said Alfonso Tarazona, a local of Paiporta who was on the street cleaning during the official visit.
Although Sánchez and Mazón have gone out of their way to avoid criticizing each other publicly, it's clear that their communication privately has been dismal. That much was made clear by the way the Valencia government requested support from the armed forces, first in small quantities of soldiers over three days and then 5,000 all at once Saturday.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo, head of the People's Party to which Mazón belongs, has publicly said it's time to cooperate and not blame others. But he also specifically pointed his finger at the national government for the delayed alerts on Oct. 29.
Since the morning of Oct. 30, when people started to take stock of the previous night's storm, thousands of homes have been wrecked and thousands of people continue to be missing. Yet leaders seemed to be clueless about the ire they were about to face.
Rescuers on Nov. 1 were still pulling bodies from the mud in Paiporta, population 27,000. An endless stream of volunteers from Valencia, caked in mud head to toe, walked 10 kilometers back home at sunset along the side of the highway.
By the time Sánchez and Felipe showed up 24 hours later, the townspeople had run out patience. The police, on foot and horse, swiftly moved to shield the VIPs. Sánchez was whisked away by his security detail. The monarch, dripping mud, went up to a group of protesters who had called them shameless and engaged then in conversation.
He, at least, was seen as having somewhat redeemed himself.
Or as Tarazona put it: “Generally, what we've been saying between neighbors is that the king, who is the least to blame, has taken the downpour.”
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