One of the phrases that Valencians repeat the most over the last ten days is that “only the people save the people.” They’re doing it because a wave of volunteers has moved into the community to try to reverse the trend. ravages of DANA. This Saturday, 130,000 people – according to the Government Delegation – took to the streets of the capital to demand the resignation of their president, Carlos Mazón, shouting “assassin”. Among the banners of the march, which left the Town Hall, there were several which said: “We got mud on our boots, you got blood on our hands“. Four volunteers were in the Plaza de la Virgen with mud on their boots: Amalia, from Segovia; Elena, from Madrid; Sofía de Toledo and Sonia, the only Valencian. A group of 25-year-old friends who went to the demonstration after participating in clean-up tasks in Catarroja, one of the towns where it still requires a lot of labor to remove the mud and empty the lands affected by the floods.
“Only the people save the people”, one of the banners during the demonstration to demand the resignation of Mazón, this Saturday
The last one, he emphasizes, like so many others: “We’re tired of people having to save this. We don’t understand why there were no preventive measures. Obviously DANA can’t be stopped, but he could have been prevented and people wouldn’t have died. And not only that. The disasters that exist…«. Sofía adds: “It’s not just that, if it has already happened, plan means, because what cannot be is that people from all over Spain come, arrive here and say ‘what should what should I do now?’, it’s that they I don’t know where to go..You can help, but there are some things you can’t do. It’s impossiblewe can scoop buckets of mud, like we did, I can shovel things, but nothing more.
“There are people who want to help, but because you don’t know that, you often do things that don’t really help, because you’re actually cleaning something that will stain in two seconds,” Elena confirms. They spent the afternoon cleaning a school in Catarroja. » You could literally fall flat in Catarroja. A teacher told us “don’t come in, it’s dangerous,” explains Amalia.
“You can help, but there are things you can’t do. It’s impossible”
“Also We walked into a garage and people can’t clean a garage.impossible to get things out of there… The firefighters didn’t organize anything, we kept saying: ‘we’re going to make chains’, but we can’t climb a hill 50 times with buckets. This is not possible,” laments Sonia.
“A disaster. We left that garage because a doctor, crying, told us that there were pipes leaking fecal water.and we are ordinary citizens, we wear masks, and we put tape everywhere… but nothing more. “Everything is horrible,” admits Sofía.
Also this morning, another group of ten volunteers, they say, worked hard to remove cars from flooded garages. ” PUSH ! If something goes wrong and it slips, it crushes them. This afternoon, they stopped helping to demand Mazón’s resignation. “Ordinary people organize themselves more than them.“, they say in reference to the leaders of the Generalitat.
The conclusion of the four young women is the same: “We need machines that start cleaning all that“. Among the people who helped was the owner of an electronics store, also in Catarroja. He started his business two months ago and lost everything. “It was completely flooded. The house too.
“In Benetúser, a woman explained to us that she was in water up to her neck and that, as she is Venezuelan, she had to obtain her passport to be able to ask for help. “His house was flooded, and the consulate is in Barcelona, how is he going to get there if he has nothing to reproach Sonia for?”
The desperation of the four young women is similar to that of the large number of volunteers who have traveled to the Valencian Community in recent days to help. Despair, rage and helplessness. And that is why they supported the protest to demand the resignation of the President of the Generalitat.
Mazón “separate”
Also present at the demonstration were Elisa and María, mother and daughter. Sitting on a step in the Plaza de la Virgen, they explain to this newspaper that several of their relatives were also affected by the floods. In his case, in Paiporta, DANA Ground Zero. They demand Mazón’s resignation and do not understand “why his party has not already dismissed him, as it did with [Francisco] Camps. They deny that the central government is guilty of the disastrous management of the emergency – in fact, during the entire march, few voices demanded the resignation of Pedro Sánchez – and, like many others, they blame that the alerts cell phones were not previously sent “in order to save many lives”.
Another protester, Mercedes Sebastià, told ABC that she was going to the demonstration alone because her sister-in-law was among the victims of the floods in Ribarroja. “The others couldn’t come. I do it in your name. “I demand Mazón’s resignation because this cannot be allowed.”
