Spain to hold memorial on first anniversary of deadly floods

VALENCIA - Grieving relatives will join political leaders Wednesday for a state memorial service in Spain for the more than 230 victims of last year's floods on the anniversary of the disaster.

King Felipe VI will lead mourners at the ceremony, which is set to get underway at 6:00 pm (1700 GMT) in Valencia, Spain's third-largest city on the Mediterranean coast.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and regional leader Carlos Mazon -- who is under fire over his response to Spain's deadliest floods in a generation -- are also expected to attend.

Mayors from the 78 municipalities hit by the floods, mostly in the southern outskirts of Valencia, have been invited, along with around 800 relatives of the victims.

The event will take place at a museum in the City of Arts and Sciences, a cultural and architectural complex surrounded by shallow pools in Valencia.

"Today is an incredibly difficult day for the families of the victims," Sanchez said in parliament on Wednesday shortly after lawmakers observed a minute of silence in memory of the dead.

"It is also a profoundly hard day for those who have lost everything and are now working to rebuild their lives after what has occurred."

In last year's natural disaster, torrential rain unleashed flooding that killed 229 people in towns near Valencia.

Seven more people died in the neighbouring Castilla-La Mancha region, and one person died in Andalusia in the south.

'DID OUR BEST'

The deluge swept away 130,000 vehicles and damaged thousands of homes, generating 800,000 tonnes of debris.

Mazon's regional administration has been heavily criticised for not sending out alerts to mobile phones until 8:11 pm -- when flooding had already started in some places.

That was more than 12 hours after the national weather agency had issued its highest alert level for torrential rains.

Despite signs of severe flooding, Mazon went ahead with an hours-long lunch with a journalist on the day of the catastrophe.

He has defended his handling of the crisis, saying its magnitude was unforeseeable and that central authorities did not provide sufficient warning about the severity of the rain.

"We did our best under unimaginable circumstances, yet in many cases it was not enough, and today we must once again acknowledge that reality,"Mazon said in a televised address on Wednesday ahead of the memorial.

The regional government has declared a day of mourning, while the town of Paiporta, at the epicentre of the disaster, will observe three days of remembrance.

'VERY HARD DAY'

"Today is going to be a very hard day for everyone because reliving everything is very painful," Marga Fernandez, a 68-year-old retiree, told AFP as she walked through Paiporta with her husband.

On one of Paiporta's main streets, a pharmacy had placed a row of red and white candles on the ground by its entrance to honour the deceased.

"I think Paiporta will take many years to be like it was, in terms of streets and houses, and I don't think the wound will ever fully heal," said Carmen Rausell, a 61-year-old pharmacist, her eyes welling with tears.

More than 50,000 people took to the streets of Valencia city on Saturday to demand that Mazonresign over his response to the floods, the latest in a string of such demonstrations.

Mazon has frequently been heckled when appearing at public events, and some victims' families have called on him to stay away from the state memorial.

But his conservative Popular Party, which sits in opposition to the Socialist Sanchez at the national level, has insisted he should be present as the representative of the Valencian people.

Under Spain's decentralised system, managing disasters falls under the authority of regional governments.