There is not a single journalist in Valencia (nor in Madrid, nor in Spain) who does not know at this stage that the competences in matters of Civil Protection alert belong to the autonomous communities. Everyone knows, even if some do not have the right to write it, that the fatal error of the Valencia crisis was to minimize the risks, by not asking the population to stay at home, despite the warnings from AEMET and real-time information from the Júcar Confederation. Hydrographic. There were elements to do this, as demonstrated by the actions of the university and the Provincial Deputation of Valencia, but it was not done. This non-decision transformed a major flood into a catastrophe with more than two hundred deaths and an unknown number of missing people.
Those who closely followed the management of the crisis say that during the 48 hours that followed this error, Mazón saw himself stunned, unable to make decisions, taking refuge in his most reliable core, among whom was none not the emergency manager of the Community, not even its vice-president or other members of the Consell. These were very long hours with an autonomous government unable even to organize its own resources to implement those offered by other administrations.
History will not be kind to judge the disastrous management of the Generalitat in the first hours and it must be politics that analyzes, over time, the errors so that they do not happen again. It remains to be seen whether the Ministry of Justice will also intervene to check whether there have been negligent actions and, therefore, crimes. The incompetence demonstrated by Mazón begins from the very formation of the government when he did not give importance to emergencies and left them in the hands of Vox, as if they were a Married. When the coalition dissolved, this government remained vacant for three months at the General Directorate of the Interior and on the same day DANA elected an expert in bullfighting celebrations to this position. Is it conceivable that a week after the flood, no one knows the face and very few the name of the emergency manager of the Generalitat?
And despite all this, from a human point of view, it was difficult not to sympathize with someone overwhelmed, unable to take control of the region’s worst flood in memory. Until Mazón started this Monday to lie and contradict AEMET, the Military Emergency Unit and even himself, on Cope, the radio in which he decided to take refuge and to which he granted two interviews in just 24 hours.
The central government can be criticized for not having dismissed Mazon in the first hours of the disaster by declaring a state of national emergency or, at least, not having exerted more pressure on the Generalitat to react promptly. the key moments of all these disasters. The first option can be discussed because many technicians warn that it would not have been very operational to assume management from the central government if, despite everything, the political leaders and technicians who should carry out the instructions were those of the Generalitat. , in any case, the closest Administration and the one that knows the area best. Less debatable is the fact that the Sánchez government should have banged its fist on the table on the second day to encourage Mazón to ask for more resources, as it did last Saturday. In his public appearances, Sánchez continues to support co-governance and repeats the obvious: that the autonomous communities and also the municipalities are the State, which is sometimes forgotten in Madrid.
That Mazón, the same leader who announced tax cuts for big companies and high incomes and who attacked his predecessors Ximo Puig and Pedro Sánchez for taxes on energy companies, now demands 31 billion euros from the government central while committing to deploy only 200 million of its budgets explains well the way in which the Popular Party conceives public management. Currently, the various ministries have already committed $10 billion in aid and the president says that support and measures for Valencia will continue as long as necessary. It will be essential to monitor the arrival of these funds when media attention leaves flooded cities.
And yet, the Valencia disaster should force us to think more about the denial of climate change and about this whole current of opinion which called for deactivating mobile alerts which have already been proven to save lives and which some are came to be described as “Orwellian” intrusions. Are those who have decided to extend their culture wars this far sleeping well?
And above all, it is worth remembering how a politician with little experience in management, beyond four years at the head of the Provincial Delegation of Alicante, the same one who is already openly criticized by his colleagues in left for Valencia and Madrid, arrived at the highest of the Generalitat. The PP and its media allies presented the campaign of the last municipal and regional elections as a plebiscite against Sánchez. There was no vote on the community or town hall model, the “let Txapote vote for you” was ratified during the elections. If anyone is interested, they can check out the rallies and media coverage from those 15 days before voting. The right-wing media trumpet loudly demanded Sánchez’s departure and saw the regional and municipal elections as a mere means to an end. There were no major debates about what governments in different communities would be or what their priorities would be.
Wherever possible, the right and the far right added their voices. The big goal of expulsion of the one some call the “squatter of Moncloa” was closer, so the PP and Vox coalitions were blessed by most of the right-wing media. It was this flood of “let Txapote vote for you” that led to a PP and Vox government in Valencia and so many other places. These coalitions only lasted a year. Right-wing speakers who have described the Sánchez government, in power in Moncloa since 2018, as a Frankenstein majority, have not yet found a term to define the fiasco of right-wing pacts everywhere. This is not new, long before, when they roared against the left majority in Congress, they blessed the PP and Ciudadanos coalitions as the epitome of stability, which also exploded in all territories.
“Let Txapote vote for you” has aged poorly and has led to very poor governments in dozens of institutions. Valencia is the most extreme case but there are others. Vox has already amply demonstrated that in addition to having ultra postulates, it is also not a reliable partner for the PP. A year and a half after the municipal and regional governments that led to governments like Mazón’s, something worse has been demonstrated: the parties that attacked Bildu because they did not condemn violence do not do so either when the applauding ultras attack the president of the One government with sticks. They are not capable of condemning violence while calling themselves constitutionalists. This gigantic hypocrisy is the last lesson of this other great farce that the right perpetrated before the municipal and regional elections in which, instead of presenting programs for municipalities and communities, it appealed to the viscera and ETA. It is time to ask ourselves if the Txapote vote for you benefited in any way the Valencians and the rest of the citizens who saw the PP and Vox coalitions arrive with an expiration date: a short year. Is this the model they will defend to replace Sánchez at Moncloa?
