Spanish King Felipe VI used his conventional Christmas Eve speech to recollect the victims of the catastrophic Valencia flash floods, and urged the nation to stay calm whereas addressing hot-button points comparable to immigration and housing affordability.

In a pre-recorded speech that normally evaluations the 12 months’s most related points, Felipe mentioned Spain “should always remember the ache and unhappiness” the floods precipitated.

The Oct. 29 floods killed greater than 225 folks in japanese Spain, damaging numerous properties and leaving graveyards of vehicles piled on high of one another. In some cities, the heavy downpours that precipitated the floods dropped as a lot as a 12 months’s value of rain in simply eight hours.

In early November, as Spaniards’ shock on the wreckage became frustration, a political blame sport started, directed particularly at regional authorities who didn’t ship well timed emergency alerts to cell telephones on the day of the floods.

The frustration of residents in hard-hit Paiporta close to Valencia was on show when folks tossed mud and shouted insults on the king and authorities officers in early November after they made their first go to to the city.

“We now have seen — and understood — the frustration, the ache, the impatience, the calls for for better and more practical coordination,” Felipe mentioned about how the catastrophe was managed.

He additionally addressed the nation’s housing crunch and excessive rents, which have turn into a number one concern within the southern European nation that’s the eurozone’s fourth-largest financial system. Quick-rising rents are particularly acute in cities like Barcelona and Madrid, the place incomes have didn’t sustain, particularly for youthful folks in a rustic with chronically excessive unemployment.

Felipe urged that “all of the actors concerned replicate” and “pay attention to one another” in order that they facilitate bringing entry to housing underneath “inexpensive situations.”

Spain’s immigration debate ought to consider the nation’s European companions and immigrants’ nations of origin, Felipe mentioned, warning that “the best way through which we’re in a position to handle immigration … will say loads sooner or later about our rules and the standard of our democracy.”

Felipe mentioned Spain wanted to stay calm within the public sphere, even within the face of a “generally thunderous” contest in its politics.