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Spain's young flood helpers smash 'snowflake' stereotype with 93 still missing
Spain's young flood helpers smash 'snowflake' stereotype with 93 still missing
by AFP Staff Writers
Valencia, Spain (AFP) Nov 6, 2024

Some 93 people are listed as missing after devastating floods ravaged southeastern Spain over a week ago, killing more than 200, regional judicial authorities in Valencia said on Wednesday.

Valencia's superior court of justice had on Tuesday listed 89 people as missing but said another four missing persons had been reported to law enforcement officers on Wednesday.

The worst floods to hit Spain in a generation have killed at least 219 people, mostly in the Valencia region.

That figure is expected to rise with many of the missing people presumed to have died, although the court said that authorities have not ruled out finding some of them alive.

Search and rescue operations on Wednesday targeted underground garages and waterways in the Valencia region.

The 15,000 police and soldiers deployed to the region have been helping clean up the devastation and repair roads and infrastructure.

Spain's government on Tuesday announced an aid package worth 10.6 billion euros ($11.5 billion) to rebuild the devastated regions.

On Wednesday, the European Investment Bank also pledged 900 million euros to finance reconstruction in the affected regions.

Spain's young flood helpers smash 'snowflake' stereotype
Valencia, Spain (AFP) Nov 6, 2024 - Young volunteers have spearheaded a humanitarian campaign for victims of Spain's deadliest floods in decades, smashing stereotypes of an apathetic and feeble "snowflake generation" interested in nothing other than themselves.

"Hundreds, perhaps thousands have come, they have conducted themselves magnificently," said Noelia Saez, a 48-year-old from the devastated town of Catarroja.

The altruism also overjoyed 62-year-old Teresa Gisbert, a resident of the ruined town of Sedavi, where dozens of young volunteers rushed to assist as mud covered the streets and her home.

"They bring us food, they have helped us... they are angels," she told AFP.

Their towns are in the eastern Valencia region, where almost all the destruction and the more than 200 deaths have been recorded since the floods struck a week ago.

With the authorities absent from some of the worst-affected areas for days, an army of ordinary citizens travelled on foot to provide food, water and cleaning equipment to clear the mud.

Youths have been at the forefront of this wave of solidarity and were at work again in Catarroja on Wednesday, loading trucks with fresh supplies, an AFP journalist saw.

It was a far cry from stereotypes caricaturing the generation born in this millennium as self-centred "snowflakes" addicted to endless scrolling on social media.

"The elderly are always going to say that people who aren't from their generation are worse," said Angela Noblejas, a 19-year-old industrial engineering student.

"But now that they've given us an opportunity, that maybe they wouldn't have given us, because it's not a good situation, we young have responded pretty well."

- 'A real goal' -

Noblejas and her fellow millennial friends spent Tuesday immersed in muck and debris in the town of Algemesi to aid the clean-up.

Her grandfather had told her of a 1957 flood that razed the Valencia region and killed dozens. Now Noblejas believes she is creating stories for her children and grandchildren.

"I think going, getting covered in mud, helping, will have been much better than telling them, 'No, I stayed at home without doing anything'," she said.

Her friend Gisela Huguet also dismissed the accusation that today's young are always on their mobile phones avidly seeking the next "like".

"We're concerned about society," the 19-year-old IT and mathematics student told AFP, saying the victims were "people from our town, people like us, university buddies".

For Jose Antonio Lopez-Guitian, a 61-year-old humourist from the city of Valencia who has joined the volunteer mobilisation, modern youths are "soft" because they live in "times that are perhaps not so hard".

"They are people of their time, and with their mobiles there's no reason why they should be like those who came before," he said.

"Young people don't have the chance to do something meaningful," he said, but Spain's greatest crisis in living memory has given them "a real goal, which above all is to help".

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