Spanish King Warns of Flood Misinformation as Death Toll Mounts

(Bloomberg) -- Spanish King Felipe IV warned angry residents about misinformation and false claims circulating on social media after more than 200 people died in floods in recent days.

The king and Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez appeared Sunday in Paiporta, a town in one of the worst-hit areas of Spain after some of the worst flooding in that country in decades. Demonstrators quickly pelted the king and government officials with mud and sticks, accusing authorities of being too slow to provide information and support to affected communities.

As the mobs became more aggressive, Sanchez was evacuated in a car. One of the vehicles in his convoy had its windows smashed by people carrying shovels. Videos of the incident and images of the damaged cars were celebrated by a number of accounts, including some posts on X and Telegram that suggested the prime minister should be deposed.

“There is a lot of information poisoning and a lot of people interested in that,” the king told the crowd, advising that instigators had injected themselves in social media conversations in order to create chaos.

False claims included statements about the death toll, with some users saying without evidence that thousands of people were dead in a Valencian shopping center based only on its parking capacity. Such stories also spread on Telegram, where users would invent more embellishments. Another insidious claim debunked by fact-checkers alleged that the storm had been manufactured in an attempt to destroy Spanish crops.

The government has said that far right-wing activists were among the crowd that attacked the prime minister and the king. According to local media reports, those people had organized themselves on Telegram groups. Neither Telegram nor X responded to requests for comment.

The activity comes after similar conspiracies and false narratives spread on social media in the wake of two hurricanes hitting the US. Former US President Donald Trump and X owner Elon Musk used X and other sites to broadcast allegations that the White House had failed to provide support to stricken areas of the country after the storms killed hundreds of people. Other conspiracies suggested that the Federal Emergency Management Agency couldn’t be trusted, forcing armed police officers to guard FEMA workers as they tried to help recovery efforts. 

In Spain, posts making unsubstantiated attacks against the aid effort, exaggerating the number of deaths and casting blame for the handling of the recovery also have spread online. 

In a possible sign of coordination, more than 20 posts used identical language to attack Carlos Mazon, arguing that he didn’t do enough to avert the consequences of the flooding. The posts made an explicitly partisan point to attack the regional leader.  Who was behind this series of posts on X wasn’t immediately clear. 

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