In the same way that DANA alone does not kill more than two hundred people without the collaboration of negligent leaders who do not inform the population in time, DANA alone is not the author of the destruction of so many homes, businesses, infrastructure and vehicles.
We like metaphors based on natural phenomena, particularly meteorological phenomena, and we apply them to any political, economic or cultural event. Whether it is an electoral result, a financial crisis, rising unemployment, the arrival of immigrants, a sporting victory or the latest musical success, we always draw on the repertoire of the most impetuous nature: hurricane, storm, tsunami, earthquake, tide…
I suppose it is because we are still insignificant humans who look with amazement and horror at the wrath of nature, likened to a terrible and capricious deity, and which is our unit of measurement for any extraordinary event. The truth is that the use and abuse of these metaphors contribute to naturalizing events that are not at all natural, to making those responsible invisible and to spreading fatalism and resignation: who can resist an economic crisis or a landslide electoral victory, when they are told like cyclones, waves or earthquakes.
If events of human origin are considered natural phenomena, what can we think of a phenomenon that, originally, undoubtedly seems natural to us, without the need for metaphors: a DANA like the one that devastated Valencia. Water that comes from the sky, without figurative meaning: clouds that form in the sea, that the wind moves, that the shock of temperatures revolutionizes, that flows over the land, that swells the rivers. Everything is pure nature, who can doubt it. We can blame Mazón, but deep down we assume that the destruction was caused by DANA, that is, nature.
And yet, DANA is us. It’s us too. I paraphrase the title of Dario Adanti’s brilliant comic strip on the climate crisis: “The meteorite is us”. UN Secretary Antonio Guterres said the same thing a few months ago: if we talk about the deterioration of the planet, this time “we are not the dinosaurs but the meteorite”. And we can say the same thing about DANA: it’s us.
We are in the first place for the same reason that Adanti and Guterres say: because we are climate change, and the violence of this DANA, and others that could occur, is linked to the abnormal warming of the Mediterranean and to other climate changes. agents that increase the frequency and intensity of this type of phenomena.
Because there will be those who question it (and not just the official denialists), those who remember that there was a “cold drop” in the Levant all their lives, and even those who, despite climate change, continue to consider DANA as a phenomenon of nature, only intensified by human action but of nature in the end, let us insist on the idea: we are the DANA because the devastation of so many cities was not caused by rain alone, nor by overflowing water. ravines, but by the political carelessness which has made it possible to massively develop flood-prone lands, which still allows it today, and which does not take the necessary measures in the face of the threats that have been alerted for years.
In the same way that DANA alone did not kill more than two hundred people without the collaboration of negligent leaders who did not warn the population in time, DANA alone was not the author of the destruction of so many homes, businesses, infrastructure and vehicles: Without the relentless help of successive municipal, regional and central governments, city planners and builders, I would not have achieved this, regardless of the level of DANA . It’s like earthquakes: the same seismic intensity does not cause the same deaths and destruction in Japan as in Haiti, since each country offers very different resistances. The same goes for our terrible DANA, that we have left dead-end rivers and ravines to overflow, and we have placed many houses and industrial areas in front of him for him to destroy.
If the Valencian disaster has had a positive effect, to say the least, it is that all of a sudden all the administrations are starting to review their territories in the most sensitive areas, the most exposed to flooding. That attempts to develop flood-prone land, such as Tablada in Seville, be abandoned; Projects such as the expansion of Prat airport are being called into question, for the same reasons, or reflecting those who, until yesterday, intended to relax restrictions in risk areas. Hopefully this will serve to accelerate the necessary measures, to rethink the urban model, to completely disavow the deniers and to stop voting for leaders whose negligence always appears in disasters.
Because DANA is us, yes, but some more than others.
