Bruno Retailleau announces the deployment of around fifty French rescuers

While the Spaniards continue to evacuate water from the streets of the Valencia region, heavily affected by floods, the French Minister of the Interior has announced to lend them a helping hand. “40 rescuers from military civil security formations and around ten territorial firefighters will be engaged in the coming hours to support the hard-hit population”warned Bruno Retailleau on X.

From the start of the disaster, the minister declared that France stood ready “if necessary” pour “send fire brigade units to help the Spanish civil security forces”. Support that the Spanish government had not requested before last Friday.

That day, the Spanish Minister of the Interior activated the European Union's civil protection mechanism, at the request of the authorities in the Valencia region. Concretely, “a hundred pieces of high-capacity pumping equipment and around fifty technical support experts were requested by Spain”noted The Country . As well as “the dispatch of means for the cleaning, recovery and treatment of waste such as construction site containers, dump trucks, sweeping vehicles, mini backhoe loaders, motor pump trucks, cranes and platforms”.

The angry population

The EU Civil Protection Mechanism, established in 2001, serves to strengthen cooperation on civil protection between the Twenty-Seven and ten other participating countries. When a State requests the activation of the mechanism, the Commission coordinates the requests and channels the offers, in addition to covering at least 75% of the operational and transport costs of the deployments.

This request for European support by the Spanish government comes as the population is outraged against the executive. On Saturday, a demonstration brought together some 130,000 people in Valencia to demand the resignation of the president of the regional government Carlos Mazón and also criticize the management of the disaster by the Spanish central government.

As a reminder, in Spain, a very decentralized country, disaster management is the responsibility of regional administrations but the central government, responsible for issuing alerts via Aemet, can provide resources and take control in extreme cases.