How come there are thousands of citizens no access to water either meal being a few kilometers from the third city of Spain, how is it possible that three days after the tragedy, episodes of plunder? Is it normal that there is no list of missing at this point? Why weren’t more military troops sent in addition to the EMU? These are the questions that many Valencians are asking themselves. 72 hours after the tragedy. The answers are not easy.
Another question is why the army did not arrive sooner, with hundreds already dead, cities still almost inaccessible and a devastated province. A question that is also being asked by the Minister of Defense herself, Margarita Robles, as highlighted in LaSexta’s special news this Friday: “That’s what we were wondering, that’s what I was wondering”.
The gaze is on him, on him president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Carlos Mazón. His government, after this Tuesday’s disaster, established emergency level 2. In this situation, it is the regional executive which commands the operation. You must send the SMS alerts to the population and also request extraordinary means from the central government, such as the army. “What I miss is that from the beginning, either the EMU was not authorized to act or more resources were not deployed. The military was ready to intervene,” insisted Robles .
Here is the key, because it was only this Thursday, 48 hours after the disaster, that Mazón asks for this help. In fact, he announces it after five in the afternoon. “I have just requested the incorporation of the army and the available land, sea and air troops,” wrote the “popular” on his X profile as an announcement.
The question then becomes whether the central government, in addition to the EMU, could have sent the army itself. “Did you arrive late? No, you arrived when the army was ordered to mobilize”intelligence analyst and founding partner of H4DM, Fernando Cocho, explains to laSexta.
The Government insists that it could not send it itself, since it would have had to activate level 3 by declaring the Alarm status. And the last time the executive did it was during the pandemic and the Constitutional Court overturned it. The logistical question would also be essential.
“It is not a question of adding many more resources if later you are not able to sustainably maintain them in the operation. Therefore, the escalation occurs gradually,” explained to laSexta Íñigo Vila, director of EMERGENCIES. Spanish Red Cross.
This is the argument that Mazón puts forward and that he repeated this Friday with the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska. “It’s changing. As we take the X-ray of the moment, the needs are detected and they are requested. Yesterday 500 were requested, today 500 are still requested”, he assured, thanking “the predisposition”, addressing the socialist. Some explanations from different angles which, however, are not enough for the Valencians.
