Friday, November 22, 2024

Thousands protest in Valencia as distrust in Spanish government grows over flood response

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“We’re covered in mud, you’ve got blood on your hands.” Behind this sign and others just as harsh, nearly 130,000 people gathered in Valencia on the evening of Saturday, November 9, according to the prefecture, to demand the resignation of the autonomous region’s president, the conservative Carlos Mazon, due to his mismanagement of the floods that killed 117 people and left 78 missing in the province on October 29.

“Murderer!” shouted some of the demonstrators, even though they had planned a silent march. “Where were you?” they asked Mazon, referring to the latest revelations about his absence throughout the afternoon of October 29. Between 2 pm and 7 pm, he was at a “professional lunch” with a local journalist, while floods devastated numerous towns. “The people of Valencia were abandoned to their fate for five days,” the manifesto read during the march concluded.

The more the days go by, the more damning the revelations about the hours leading up to the “floods of the century” on October 29 become for the government, which is responsible for disaster management, warning the population and activating the emergency services. Overwhelmed by the disaster and unaware of its seriousness, the conservative Valencian government downplayed warnings from the Meteorological Agency (Aemet), which had declared a red alert at 7:36 am on the morning of October 29.

The regional authorities also ignored the seriousness of the information transmitted by the Confederación Hidrográfica del Jucar, as early as 11 am, to Valencian emergency services, concerning the flow of the Magre River and the Poyo, the watercourse that devastated Chiva at midday and then, in the evening, Paiporta, Catarroja and other neighborhoods in the southern suburbs of Valencia.

Ten days after the tragedy, it appears that throughout the day, the Spanish government, led by the socialist Pedro Sanchez, tried to alert the regional authorities to the importance of taking action. Central government delegate Pilar Barnabé convened a meeting at 9 am with the Military Emergency Unit (UME), the Civil Guard, the Aemet and the Valencian emergency services.

She also made three calls, between 12 and 2 pm, to the regional Minister of the Interior and Justice Salomé Pradas to make all state resources available to deal with the torrential rain and flooding then occurring in Utiel and threatening the entire province of Valencia. Pradas did not ultimately declare level 2 of the emergency plan until around 3 pm, at which point she called on the UME only for the Utiel area.

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