The former presidents of the Government Felipe González (PSOE) and José María Aznar (PP) coincided this Wednesday in Ávila, in an act of homage to the late Adolfo Suárez, first head of the Executive whose death marked ten years in March , and they claimed the involvement of the entire State in the tragedy of the isolated high-level depression (DANA) in the east of the peninsula, which particularly affected the province of Valencia, where there are more than two hundred dead. recorded so far.
González already spoke this Tuesday in Valladolid about the political response to the storm, but it was the first time that the first popular man who was president of the government spoke. “If it is said that this is the biggest natural disaster of this century in Spain, we must act accordingly. When you have a responsibility, you must exercise it. “The responsibility for a national catastrophe lies with the government of the nation,” Aznar said, pointing to the executive led by Pedro Sánchez as the first to respond to the crisis caused by the cold fall.
Until now, command of the DANA intervention operation was held by the president of the autonomous government of the Valencian Community, Carlos Mazón (PP), and Sánchez offered his assistance to the regional executive, but assuming a secondary role. This Tuesday, Sánchez announced the declaration of a catastrophic zone and a first specific aid program for areas affected by historic floods amounting to 10.6 billion euros. For the moment, the socialist is hesitant to declare a state of national emergency, as demanded by the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, which would centralize decision-making at the Ministry of the Interior.
The day before, of course, González had made it clear that he would not have said, like Sánchez, that if the province of Valencia needed help, it should ask for it. In Ávila, at the Lienzo Norte Exhibition and Congress Center, DANA attended the tribute to Suárez, considered a key figure in the history of Spain and one of the great architects of the Transition. In the audience was his son Adolfo Suárez Illana, former PP deputy, who personally heard his father’s praise. Previously, the rector of the Catholic University of Ávila, María del Rosario Sáez Yuguero, requested a minute of silence for the victims of the storm.
The entire room, full, stood up. Then the president of the regional government of Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, spoke, who inevitably also thought of the people affected by the floods. In their first intervention, as it could not be otherwise, González and Aznar raised this issue which has been worrying all Spaniards for eight days. González recalled that a year after taking office, he experienced significant flooding in Bilbao and moved the army from Burgos. The flooding of the capital of Biscay left 34 dead and within 72 hours there were 10,000 soldiers in Bilbao. In Valencia, a week later, there were 7,500 soldiers.
González did not want to take a position on the need or not to declare a state of national emergency, which would remove command from Mazón and leave it in the hands of Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and recalled that he had communicated with the Lendakari at the time, Carlos Garaikoetxea, and he proposed to him to coordinate the whole operation, as Sánchez did now with Mazón, but he rejected it because “it was more logical than the State assumes it as a whole.” To applause, he added: “I don’t care how it’s described. When it produces a catastrophic national effect, we must all agree to act with all available means. From central government to regional governments and city councils. What will it be called? I don’t care, I want to talk about the substance. Let them sit down and agree. As I said yesterday in Valladolid, decentralizing power is not decentralizing power.
Aznar, in the same sense, emphasized: “If this responsibility is not assumed, things can hardly work. Furthermore, victims should not be treated as if they were strangers. “When you are president of the government, you are not president of an NGO, you are president of the government.”
