Deleted tweets, missed warnings and calls for the ‘hangman’: the bitter political fallout from Spain’s floods

Volunteers clear a street from mud in flood-hit Paiporta, Valencia. Photograph: Biel Aliño/EPA

The sun still hadn’t risen on Tuesday 29 October when the mayor of Utiel, Ricardo Gabaldón, took another look at the warnings from Spain’s state meteorological office and ordered all the schools in the small Valencian town to close.

“The warning early that morning – at 5am or 6am – was orange,” he said. “That’s when I was weighing up whether to close the schools here. In the end, I ordered them to close at six or seven that morning. Soon after, the alert went red.”