Spain's king and queen pelted with mud in flood-hit Valencia
Spain's king and queen pelted with mud in flood-hit Valencia
Protesters shouted "murderer" at Felipe VI, and the prime minister had to be evacuated as the crowd grew hostile.
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/46537396
having kings and queens in the year 2024 is just entirely ridiculous.
I honestly had no idea that Spain was still a monarchy.
Perfectly valid behaviour. He is the symbol of the state. People are pissed at the state for being slow to react. He is simply dealing with what comes with the job. If he doesn’t-t like it, he can always abdicate.
Abandon people for days > Going to take photos with the same people. What did they expect?
Edit: fix typo
Tell you have no idea how civil protection and emergency response works in Spain without telling me you have no idea how civil protection and emergency response works in Spain.
Emergency response is the responsibility of the autonomous communities not of the national government which only makes resources available to the regional governments. Valencians were abandoned by their own politicians.
I know it all too well; I'm from Valencia and I've seen firsthand how official help barely arrived on time—only the volunteers, the local community, and a few from the UME stepped up. Politicians from both the Valencian Community and Spain promised assistance, but it never came. It took days for official help to show up. Then they come for a visit, just to take photos, like that actually does anything. They cleaned the streets where they were going to walk, but left the rest of the neighborhood a mess. People have lost everything, and the politicians just come to play politics. The reaction is totally understandable.
This seems like... a bad idea? If I understand you correctly, each region maintains disaster relief infrastructure & staff with help from the central/national government? If so, does that translate to richer regions being less affected by calamities (since they can pour more money into said infrastructure than the bare minimum)?
In most countries (with such plans in place) the national government maintains all disaster relief management to assist local governments, right?
Sorry I've asked a lot of questions, but I'm genuinely interested to know!
Does the Spanish royalty have any actual power?
Not really, just representative. They are useless. They are just eating spanish money because yes.
Right. But that doesn't really make sense to blame them when they had no power to prevent this either. This should be put onto the actual politicians and all the voters who did not vote for Green politicians (which I would guess includes a lot of the people now trying to scapegoat the royalties here).
The violent protests during the visit of the Spanish royal couple and Prime Minister Sánchez to the flood disaster area may have been organized by right-wing extremist groups.
As the Spanish Interior Minister Grande-Marlaska explained, there are clear indications of this.
The idea that early kingdoms are despotisms in which the people exist only for the sovereign, is wholly inapplicable to the monarchies we are considering. On the contrary, the sovereign in them exists only for his subjects: his life is only valuable so long as he discharges the duties of his position by ordering the course of nature for his people’s benefit. So soon as he fails to do so, the care, the devotion, the religious homage which they had hitherto lavished on him cease and are changed into hatred and contempt; he is ignominiously dismissed and may be thankful if he escapes with his life. Worshipped as a god one day, he is killed as a criminal the next. But in this changed behaviour of the people there is nothing capricious or inconsistent. On the contrary, their conduct is quite consistent. If their king is their god he is or should be, also their preserver; and if he will not preserve them he must make room for another who will. So long, however, as he answers their expectations, there is no limit to the care which they take of him, and which they compel him to take of himself.
- J. G. Frazer, Taboo, The Burden of Royalty
Once I was the king of Spain.
Now I eat humble pie. 🤷