The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has mobilized up to three Air Force planes to travel to the Climate Summit being held in Baku (Azerbaijan). A forum in which the head of the executive plans to intervene this Tuesday and which he used as a pretext not to be held responsible before the Congress of Deputies for the government’s management of the DANA crisis, which made the least 223 dead and dozens missing.
Concretely, Sánchez mobilized an Airbus A310, an emergency Falcon 900 and the Super Puma helicopter which took him this Monday from the Moncloa Palace, after his appearance at the end of the Council of Ministers, to the military base of Torrejón de Ardoz, where. he boarded the aforementioned Airbus, which had greater capacity than the Falcon to transport the government delegation and invited press. The movements today of these three planes, more polluting than other means of transport, were verified by this newspaper through a platform which records air traffic.
It turns out that the journey between the Moncloa Palace and the Torrejón de Ardoz military base is barely 25 kilometers, which Sánchez could easily have done by car, which is less polluting than the aforementioned armed forces helicopter. In fact, the king usually makes this trip in an official car when using the Falcon, which takes off from said military base. It should also be noted that the Super Puma is based in Cuatro Vientos, so when it has to take Sánchez from the Moncloa heliport to the Torrejón military airfield, it therefore has to make several trips between these points, with the effect pollutant that this implies.
This meeting in Baku will help Sánchez pontificate on climate change, to which he attributes the catastrophe of October 29, without being self-critical about the government’s poor performance. It should be remembered that the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) and the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation (CHJ), dependent on the Ministry of Ecological Transition led by Teresa Ribera, were singled out in this crisis.
The first of these organizations underestimated the storm, while the CHJ recently informed by email the emergency service of the Valencian Generalitat of the overflow of the Barranco del Poyo, decisive in the scale of the tragedy.
When asked this Monday during a press conference if Ribera had been up to the task in handling the crisis, Sánchez answered yes and said: “The world, Europe and Spain need more Teresas Ribera and fewer climate change deniers.” This Tuesday precisely, while Sánchez speaks at the Climate Summit, his Green vice-president will take the exam of the European Parliament in Brussels to become commissioner of the community executive of Ursula Von der Leyen. The Spanish PP has already advanced its vote against and transferred its family partners popular European Union the reasons why Teresa Ribera cannot be elected commissioner.
Ribera and Sánchez were criticized by the opposition for their inaction in the DANA tragedy. The head of executive, as published in this newspaper, did not use the emergency Falcon which accompanied him to India on October 29 to return as quickly as possible. And this, despite the fact that he knew of the red alert for DANA in the Spanish Levante 13 hours before boarding the Air Force Airbus with which he returned to Madrid after his official trip to this Asian country.
On Tuesday, October 29, at 7:31 a.m., the Spanish Meteorological Agency (Aemet), dependent on the Third Vice-Presidency of the Government and the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, headed by Teresa Ribera, declared the red alert. due to the storm for the entire province of Valencia. Despite this warning and in the face of the worsening situation, Sánchez refused to take the empty Falcon that accompanied him to India after finishing his press conference on Tuesday around 4 p.m. Spanish time. It was their last official activity of the trip.
However, the Spanish delegation’s Airbus, with senior government officials, participants and the press, and in which Sánchez boarded, took off only around 8:30 p.m. Spanish time from Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Bombay, India, that is to say at least four hours after he finished his appearance before the media. At that time, 13 hours had passed since the AEMET red alert and news of the first effects of DANA was already in the media.
