THE expected appearance of Carlos Mazón to give explanations on the management of the emergency due to the devastating DANA which devastated Valencia also helped the Valencian president start making your plans for the day after the tragedy. The popular baron announced that he would seek power from the government of Pedro Sánchez have a little more than 5.1 billion euros in European funds and the recovery plan without executing it to start investments in its reconstruction plan.
Money that would only be a first injection of more than 31 billion euros of which the Generalitat quantifies the total amount necessary to remedy the damage and losses in the province of Valencia. “It is obvious that we need a lot of money,” recognized Mazón, who considered it one of his main tasks to demand this sum from the central government. A voluminous volume which defended that “it is not a product of improvisation, far from being a whim”, but a “rigorous” calculation to “start to recover” the territory after the storm.
Among the concrete measures to make the arrival of this economic injection possible, the Valencian president announced that he would ask Sánchez’s executive to activate funds and unexecuted positions immediately. More specifically, he will ask that the 2,091 million euros that the European Union granted to Spain as part of the recovery plan in June 2021 after the pandemic, intended to preservation of the coastline and water resourceswhich includes the fight against flooding.
According to Mazón, this object has not been used during all this time and Now it would be used to “channel ravines and build water defenses.” this should already be done.
The Generalitat Valenciana will also request the activation of other 3,060 million euros of Loss of Digitalization of Water, which was approved in March 2022 but they are still not mobilized. The Valencian president used this poor execution also constitutes an argument for its defense transfer responsibilities to other organizations, in particular the Hydrographic Confederation of Júcar (CHJ). “We must be able to count on existing technologies already applied in other basins, such as that of the Ebro” to anticipate future floods.
After the continuous fights and cross reproaches with the State Administration, in his speech he mentioned the controversy, although without directly criticizing Sánchez: “Collaboration shouldn’t be something we have to ask for or negotiate, it should happen naturally as the response of a sensitive and conscious government”.
Mistakes, Excuses, and Responsibility
After announcing in previous days that mistakes had been made and that it was necessary to self-criticize, the Valencian president apologized, but without taking responsibility emergency management of the fateful October 29. In his turn to respond, he even postponed them to what will happen with the reconstruction plan, assuring that he will assume “the political consequences of not personally running for office” if you are unable to lead this process.
He previously acknowledged that the response to the disaster “was not as effective as it should have been and that is something that you need to apologize. I, in the name of the Generalitat, do it.” He even went so far as to add that he had “the painful conviction that it could have been done better”. But when analyzing errors, he hid behind other organizations and even technical protocols, which failed according to his version. About his delay in getting to the Emergency Coordination Centerblame “in bad weather” which produced a “high density of traffic”, after several versions were proposed during these days and all different.
Mazón appealed to both the scale of a DANA with a volume higher than Aemet’s forecasts -even if he settled the red alert which represents an extreme risk-, as the lack of information for two hours on the flooding of the Poyo ravine by the Confederation. “There was a lack of information and coordination,” he noted, adding that “we learned from politicians and technicians what was not working well and we corrected it.”
From no to UVE to emergencies
To face the mission of rebuilding the affected areas, Mazón also presented the restructuring of his government, which does not have a parliamentary majority. In addition to create a macro-vice-presidency focused on the reconstruction planMazón, announced the creation of a new Department of Emergencies and Interior to reformulate protocols and the need to strengthen “public response”.
Mazón himself repealed the project a year ago to create the Valencian Emergency Unit (UVE) planned by his predecessor Ximo Puig because he then affirmed that this meant a duplication of positions and functions in an area which was in the hands of Vox until last June.
