CESAR MANSO / AFP
Floods in Spain: why France is only now sending 50 firefighters to the site (Photo PTise in the Valencia region on November 8, 2024)
SPAIN – Spain calls on France for help. After the terrible floods which hit the country in recent weeks and left more than 220 dead, France will finally send 50 firefighters to the site. Two weeks after the first deadly floods.
In ” the next few hours » 40 rescuers from military civil security formations and around ten territorial firefighters will be deployed, announced the Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, on the evening of Monday, November 11.
If sending aid took so long, it is not Paris's fault. The French government was already ready to mobilize on October 31, the day after the first floods. The Minister of the Interior then announced that he had offered 250 agents to the Spanish government.
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And that this offer had been refused by his counterpart, Fernando Grande-Marlaska. The latter would have considered that this aid was not for the moment “ not necessary » since the Spanish army was already mobilized.
Valencia must give the green light
However, the Spanish ministry is not in a position to accept or refuse this type of aid, underlines TF1 Infosince this is up to the local authorities, here to the Valencian government. The minister only has the capacity to transmit aid proposals. On the other hand, if local authorities wait too long to act, the Spanish government can then trigger a state of emergency and take control of the situation.
As stated in 20 Minutes María Elisa Alonso, lecturer at the University of Lorraine and political scientist, there are three levels of crisis, which determine who has the authority to act. “We have an alert level of 1 to 3. It is the president of each autonomous community who manages the level. When it's an alert 1 or 2, he's the one who manages it. If it decides to raise the level to 3, it is the central government which takes the upper hand”she explains. Here, level 2 has never been exceeded.
Valencia therefore finally had to resolve to launch an appeal for European solidarity to try to get back on its feet.
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