It’s a crowded Plaza del Ayuntamiento that appears on the front page of the Spanish daily ABC. At the call of around sixty civil society associations, nearly 130,000 people gathered in the center of Valencia to protest against the management of the terrible floods which affected the area as well as to demand the resignation of the president curator of the autonomous region, Carlos Mazón.
“The Valencian left appropriates the pain of the dana [“goutte froide”, en français, le phénomène météorologique ayant entraîné les pluies diluviennes] ”, writes the conservative Madrid newspaper on the front page. According to ABC, which cites a document distributed ahead of the demonstration, the organizers of the rally chose to focus their demands on the departure of Carlos Mazón while “avoiding criticizing the inaction of the central government.”
The autonomous region led by the right and the socialist central government are passing the buck regarding the failed management of the floods which left 217 dead and 78 missing in the province on October 29. The Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, announced on Wednesday, November 6, a first aid plan of 10.6 billion euros.
If Pedro Sánchez comes under criticism, it is Carlos Mazón who becomes the receptacle of popular anger. Some participants, for example, shouted “Mazón, assassin”, ignoring the instructions to meet for a silent walk. The member of the People's Party is accused of not having taken into account the alerts of the Meteorological Agency (Aemet), which had declared the red alert at 7:36 a.m. on the morning of October 29 as well as several other warnings – including from from the central government – received throughout the day.
The fact remains that, for the conservative daily, this gathering was a stratagem so that “that the Valencian left returns to center stage, a year and a half after losing the power it held at the regional and municipal levels”.
