Tens of thousands of people demonstrated their anger on Saturday in Valencia against the political class for their management of the floods which left at least 220 dead in the south-east of Spain last week. According to the government delegation in Valencia, the demonstration brought together “130,000 people”.
The participants met at the end of the day on the large square in front of the Valencia town hall to walk the kilometer that separates it from the headquarters of the regional government. They demanded in particular “the resignation” of its president Carlos Mazón (Popular Party, right), but the socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was not spared from criticism either. The two men are accused by victims of having underestimated the risks and poorly coordinated relief after the floods of October 29, which devastated nearly 80 municipalities.
For Julián García, 73, “Mazón’s management has been indecent and he should resign. The Valencian government is responsible and did not want to ask what it could ask from the central government, also a little responsible. Ana de la Rosa, 30, regrets the “political wars when it was not the time, because the citizens needed help and did not have it.” She demands “justice” for what she describes as “manslaughter”.
“Solo el pueblo salva el pueblo” (“Only the people save the people”): in Valencia, this slogan became popular in conversations after the spontaneous wave of solidarity that was organized to compensate for the supposed errors of the authorities.
During this gathering which brought together all social classes, the grievances focused on Carlos Mazón, who had been targeted on Sunday in Paiporta, like the head of government and the sovereigns Felipe VI and Letizia, with insults and throwing mud. Figure of the Popular Party, Mazón, a 50-year-old lawyer, is accused of having been slow to react even though the Spanish Meteorological Agency (Aemet) had issued a red alert on the morning of October 29.
He is also accused of having been absent for several hours when it was already starting to rain and the emergency committee had met. Carlos Mazón defended himself by assuring that he was participating in “a working lunch” in a restaurant in Valencia with a journalist, according to Spanish media.
Among the accusations also made by the victims, the fact that the entire population was only alerted via their mobile phones in the evening, when many areas were already submerged. The region’s main emergency manager admitted Thursday that she was unaware of the existence of this alert system, before retracting her statement.
In Spain, disaster management is the responsibility of regional administrations, but the central government, responsible for issuing alerts via Aemet, can provide resources and even take control in extreme cases. It is precisely this last point which motivates the criticism of the right-wing opposition, which accuses the head of the socialist government of having allowed the region to sink through political calculations instead of regaining control.
Sources close to the government assure for their part that they want to define in due time the possible responsibilities of each person and the possible failures in the management of the disaster, while affirming that the government has done everything it could do within the current institutional framework. .
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