Summary
King Felipe VI of Spain faced a hostile crowd in Valencia, where unprecedented floods have devastated communities, leaving over 200 dead and many missing. Footage shows protesters shouting “murderer” and “shame” at the king, with some throwing objects and mud as he walked through the affected area of Paiporta.
I think the king is being a lightning rod in this case, not sure what a ceremonial rich dude could have done.
That said, this should be a red alert warning to the entirety of Europe. It happened in Austria last month, in Greece last year and it’s going to keep happening. We can’t keep doing business as usual, the climate crisis is here.
People are afraid and confused, they have never seen anything like this. They need something to direct their anger towards, and out of confusion, they see this rich guy with no problems and never having struggled before in his life. Too easy of a target. There are probably a lot of questions that people don’t have answers to. How could they have not seen this coming? Why was there no warning? Why aren’t the rich people using their personal funds to help with the efforts of recovery? That’s my take
He could have lobbied on their behalf. And it would look very disrespectful and shameful for the government to ignore him asking for help for his subjects.
This is the kind of situation in which a king (or president) can make a difference.
Royalty don’t have any direct power to order people to do things, but they do have a voice with quite a broad reach. Whenever the king speaks, people will hear it. Even if they don’t care about the king.
In a time where people are getting their information from sources curated to fit their own political bubble or economical interests, it’s quite powerful to be able to reach a whole country across political and economic interests.
Royalties can’t dictate, but they can encourage and motivate people to work together on a common goal despite of their differences.
When something is seriously threatening the country, it would be nice if the king would bother making a motivational speech, so that people, companies and politicians could see the purpose of uniting against the common threat.
It might not sway the opinions of people or companies who have strong interests in not doing anything differently, but it will boost the morale of people trying to do their best, enabling them to rest assured that they’re doing the right thing despite of what others might do. We could say it’s a really vague forn of long term meta-politics, but sometimes that’s also all that is needed to set a direction.
It’s not political as such, but more like “yo let’s save this sinking ship” instead of passivily watching it happen. It won’t fix anything by itself, but it’s a good start. Without a good start and set direction, you can be sure that nothing will ever change.
Not to mention the mass stores of wealth I’m sure he has. That could probably go a long way towards improving things. I’m sure also, as a rich person, he produces far more CO2 than most, which certainly doesn’t help the situation. He could work towards decreasing that and improving green initiatives.