Flood disaster in Valencia: dispute over jurisdiction with fatal consequences

The autonomous regions in Spain have been responsible for civil protection for 40 years. After a major flood in Bilbao in 1983, the Basques fought for this authority from the central government before the Constitutional Court. The ruling also set a precedent for most of Spain’s seventeen autonomous regions.

But it is precisely this redistribution of competencies that is now having fatal consequences after the severe storms in Valencia. Although the regions have been responsible for the civil protection of their population for decades, they have not planned enough resources for this in their budgets. In Spain, civil protection at the regional level usually means operations at folk festivals or security measures at football games and car races, but little more. The scarce resources are far from sufficient to respond adequately to an environmental disaster like the current one, which has so far left more than 210 dead and over a thousand missing.

A hesitant prime minister

Added to this are political sensitivities that prevented courageous and coordinated action after the storm of the century. Valencia’s conservative regional leader Carlos Mazón hesitated for several days to accept the offers of help from the socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. He initially only agreed to deploy the military in one of the four particularly hard-hit districts.

But Madrid also has to accept the accusation of serious omissions. Sánchez certainly had the opportunity to declare a “national emergency” intended for such cases, but he decided not to enter into a dispute over jurisdiction with Mazón. This is the only way to understand that six days had to pass before, for example, the flooded underground car park of Valencia’s largest shopping center could be pumped out at least enough for the rescue workers to begin their search for victims. The chances of rescuing survivors from the cars after such a long time are therefore slim.

The citizens in the flooded regions have felt the consequences of the unfortunate distribution of powers firsthand. You feel left alone. While they wait for food, medicine and clean drinking water, they have to watch as politicians pass the buck to each other for the delayed response to the crisis.

State institutions in disrepute

The fact that the exhausted residents of Paiporta threw mud at Spain’s royal couple, Sánchez and Mazón, during a visit to their destroyed town at the weekend, resulting in tumultuous scenes, should be seen as a serious warning and shows how much the state institutions are now discredited by their citizens advised.

And the fact that thousands of volunteers from all over Spain have flocked to the greater Valencia area in the last few days and tried to compensate for the lack of action by state institutions is a further signal that politicians must react.

The flood disaster in Valencia has now shown the limits of Spain’s territorial model, at least when it comes to civil protection. One cannot avoid revising the distribution of competences between regional authorities and the central state. This will be challenging, especially since the transition to a federal model after 40 years of dictatorship was anything but easy.