“I wouldn’t have said they asked me for everything they needed, I wouldn’t have said it!“, is the resounding sentence that the former President of the Government Felipe González launched this Tuesday in Valladolid, clearly alluding to the President of the National Executive, Pedro Sánchez, regarding his reaction after the DANA which, last week, devastated different autonomous communities. , mainly Valencian, and left behind 217 dead.
The third president of the Spanish government after the transition, with a record mandate of thirteen and a half years, took advantage of his intervention at a meeting organized by ‘El Norte de Castilla’ under the title ‘Conversation with Felipe González’ to censor the performance of Sánchez in this “indescribable tragedy” for having offered state aid at the request of the affected territories.
“!I wouldn’t have said to ask me everything you need.“I wouldn’t have said it!”, blurted the former president, then recalled that in 1982, as soon as he took power, he was confronted with another natural tragedy in Bilbao and that he then did not hesitate to send the Armed Forces of Burgos to the Biscayan capital twenty-four hours after the flood caused by the cold fall.
“The Spanish State is articulated in a central power that is not centrifugal,” warned the politician and lawyer to reinforce the idea of leadership that, according to him, Pedro Sánchez should have exercised, just as he had to assume it when he these dates in 1982 He contacted the then Lehendakari, Carlos Garaikoetxea, to offer him command of the troops sent to the Basque Country, which, as he added, the Basque president rejected because he preferred that the operation be led by the central administration.
Remember that the day after the flood, the army had already set up tents and a field kitchen to care for the victims, because there was no humane means of providing this service.
“I will try not to heat the environment but to cool it because Sánchez, Feijóo and the autonomous communities concerned have the time to sit down, plan and act now because there is a lot of work to do… and the protagonist must be the central government”, a declared Felipe González, who responded in the affirmative to the question whether the decisions were taken late and whether they could have acted differently, while recalling that in the face of tragedies of this magnitude, it is necessary to resort to European funds to try to mitigate its effects.
González also referred to the incidents recorded in Paiporta (Valencia) during the visit to the area carried out by the royal delegation and the presidents of the Government and the Valencian Community, where “intolerable attacks” occurred despite “the logical indignation faced with the feeling of “abandonment” of the inhabitants of the municipality, even if the former president refused to attribute such events to people linked to the extreme right because it is something that “the judicial investigation must determine”.
