2 weeks Ago By Rachel Hagan
As Spain grapples with its deadliest flood disaster in decades, tensions are escalating in the devastated Valencian suburb of Paiporta where vigilante groups have begun patrolling the streets to curb what they say are rampant post-flood robberies. Following record-breaking floods that claimed over 200 lives across Spain , residents in some of the hardest-hit areas have turned to self-policing, frustrated by what they see as a lacklustre official response. Groups of local men—some donning nationalist symbols—are patrolling rubble-strewn, poorly lit streets, seeking to prevent further victimisation by deterring alleged looters, Reuters has reported.
The suburb of Valencia where the stick-wielding men are patrolling is where the king and queen of Spain were pelted with mud. As search and rescue operations continue, authorities are using sniffer dogs to comb through a submerged underground carpark at a shopping centre on the outskirts of the city, where severe flooding left vehicles and the structure underwater. As police teams pump out the floodwaters and search through the roughly 50 waterlogged vehicles discovered so far, no bodies have yet been found.
Survivors described the terrifying event to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo as “a nightmare” and “worse” than the “tsunami movie” with shop assistants recounting how they narrowly escaped as torrents of water surged into the complex..
