Floods in Spain | Government unveils aid plan, continuation of clean-up operations

(Valencia) The Spanish government unveiled on Tuesday an aid plan of 10.6 billion euros (16 billion Canadian dollars) for tens of thousands of affected residents and businesses in the southeast of the country, a week later the dramatic floods which left 219 dead and 89 missing.

According to reports provided by national and regional authorities, 219 people died and 89 others were missing in these bad weather, the vast majority in the Valencia region.

Among them are two Chinese, two Romanians, an Ecuadorian and three British.

“The joint offices of the scientific police and security forces have counted 89 cases of missing persons,” the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencia region announced on Tuesday evening on X.

This is the first time that the authorities have given a figure for missing people.

The courts have already authorized the handing over of “nearly fifty bodies” of the deceased to their families, the Valencia Superior Court of Justice had previously specified.

“National shame”

Faced with the scale of the disaster, the government will activate “direct aid for affected citizens and businesses, as we did during the pandemic, with as little paperwork as possible and as quickly as possible,” declared the Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez at the end of the Council of Ministers.

“What citizens want is to see their institutions not fighting among themselves, but working side by side,” he insisted, while the executive and the government of Valencia, the region most affected by floods, are the subject of strong criticism for their management of the disaster.

Assuring that the government was on the side of those affected, Mr. Sánchez announced direct aid for 30,000 businesses and 65,000 self-employed workers. He also specified that the State would cover 100% of urgent expenses incurred by municipalities to help their citizens and clear the streets.

“The total investment of all these first measures” will exceed “10.6 billion euros” (16 billion Canadian dollars), indicated Mr. Sánchez, specifying that he had “formally requested” Brussels for assistance from European Solidarity Fund.

“There are still people to be located, houses and businesses are destroyed, buried under mud,” recalled the Prime Minister, who castigated the “irresponsible speeches” of climate skeptics, in view of the disaster which affected the region. “Climate change kills,” he insisted.

“We are not doing well”

According to the executive, electricity was restored on Tuesday to “98% of homes” and “68%” of damaged telephone lines were repaired. In addition, 40 kilometers of roads and 74 kilometers of railways were repaired.

On the ground, the situation nevertheless remains very complicated, particularly in Paiporta, a town of 25,000 inhabitants in the suburbs of Valencia, considered the epicenter of the tragedy, with more than 70 victims. On Tuesday, drinking water returned, but the streets were still clogged with vehicles.

“We are better, but we are not doing well,” summarized Mayor Maribel Albalat on the public channel TVE. “We need machines, we need professionals to come and clean the streets, empty them,” she implored.

Authorities continue to inspect underground parking lots, many of which have been completely flooded.

No victims were ultimately found in the Bonaire shopping center in Aldaia, which aroused many fears. “False information was spread, claiming that there were many bodies: this was not true,” assured the director of the national police, Francisco Pardo.

In recent days, the personnel of the Military Emergency Unit (UME), which responds to natural disasters, have installed numerous pumps to begin evacuating the water.

In total, nearly 15,000 soldiers and police officers are deployed on the ground, according to the executive, which specifies that this number has doubled in three days. A deployment still considered insufficient by part of the population.

Institutions “cannot abandon people”, it is “a national shame”, told AFP José Antonio López-Guitián, a 61-year-old Valencian comedian known as Tonino, who came to help residents from the town of Massanassa, south of Valencia.

Dressed in blue overalls and boots covered in mud, the comedian ensures that the residents of Massanassa remain “alone”, a week after the bad weather. “We saw a military car pass” and not much else, he laments.

This exasperation gave rise to an explosion of anger on Sunday against the King of Spain, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and the President of the Valencia region Carlos Mazón, targeted by throws of mud and objects during a visit to Paiporta.