Protesters urge regional Spanish leader to quit a year after deadly floods

By Miguel Gutierrez, Guillermo Martinez and Ana Cantero

VALENCIA (Reuters) -Tens of thousands of people demonstrated in the eastern Spanish city of Valencia on Saturday and called for conservative regional leader Carlos Mazon to resign over his handling of flash floods that killed 229 people a year ago.

Displaying banners with messages such as "Mazon to prison" and chanting, "They didn't die, they were murdered," protesters filled the centre of Valencia for the 12th time since the flash floods occurred almost exactly one year ago.

"I have lost everything, but what matters is not the material losses but the human losses. And they could have been avoided," 71-year-old flood survivor Cristina Guzman Trabero told Reuters. "And we are here demanding justice. We don't want anything else."

Residents of the affected areas accuse the regional government of issuing an alert too late after buildings were already under water and many people were drowning in the most catastrophic flood-related event in Europe since 1967.

A judicial investigation is under way into the emergency response. On Thursday, the court summoned a local journalist who had lunch with Mazon on the day of the floods - October 29, 2024.

Spanish authorities said on Thursday that the body of a 56-year-old man had been found buried in mud a year after he was swept away by the water.

The catastrophic floods were caused by a destructive weather system, known locally as DANA, in which cold and warm air meet and produce powerful rain clouds, a pattern believed to be growing more frequent due to climate change.

(Reporting by Miguel Gutierrez, Guillermo Martinez and Ana Cantero; Editing by Leslie Adler)