“We are facing a national emergency. The Spanish government must be in charge. The sentence was pronounced last Monday by the president of Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco. The PP baron thus took the place of its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and opposed his Valencian counterpart, Carlos Mazón. The “president” of the Generalitat did not receive any explicit support from any of the most important leaders of his party for his decision not to delegate control of the management of DANA, which caused more than 200 deaths and immense material damage.
Mazón is increasingly alone in defending a political decision which already seems irreversible: to retain command in his person after the worst storm recorded in decades and whose consequences are not yet quantifiable in all their extremes. And his party has repeatedly shown him the path to follow to have the support of the entire organization.
The first was Feijóo himself last Thursday when, while citizens were still waiting for the deployment of human and material resources, he demanded that the government declare a “national emergency”. A formula which, according to the law, would give operational command to the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska. And I would take it away from Mazón himself.
The Valencian president responded a few minutes later during an appearance with Pedro Sánchez during which he corrected his leader. From the first moment, Mazón valued the “collaboration” of the central government, which would justify not delegating power.
The same Thursday, Andalusian President Juan Manuel Moreno also declared that the disaster caused by DANA is “an emergency of national interest” whose management and coordination must be assumed by Marlaska “to mobilize, direct and coordinate the resources of the ‘State “. Andalusia was also hit by DANA, but with more luck than the Valencian Community and without any human casualties. Since then, Moreno has remained silent on this issue and, like other regional leaders, focused his message on the aid available to Mazón.
Over the weekend, a so-called internal “report” was leaked, containing the arguments of the national PP: the government should have taken power on Tuesday, even before the floods. If the alert was not sent before eight o’clock in the afternoon, when the water was already flooding hundreds of kilometers of territory, it was the fault of Sánchez who did not declare the state emergency, which in reality was an attempt to hide the errors of Mazón’s actions. .
This Monday, the pressure on Mazón grew stronger from within his own ranks. After Mañueco’s words, Feijóo emphasized his message more clearly. “We continue to request, as we have from day one, the declaration of a national emergency,” he said in a statement, without asking questions from reporters. “And if he decides, he has our support,” he added.
But this first person of the plural does not seem to bind the whole of the PP because the Valencian Community does not follow the strategy set by the national leadership of Calle de Génova in Madrid. Mazón tried to take refuge in the first days behind his Minister of Justice, Salomé Pradas, but had to publicly assume his responsibility on Saturday, after the appearance of Pedro Sánchez. It was when he demanded that instead of putting the Valencian authorities at the service of the sole command of the Government, it was the ministers who put themselves at his disposal in different working groups that he was going to launch, four days after the flood. .
Since then, Mazón has tried to maintain control over the management of the tragedy in order to protect himself at the head of the Generalitat, while part of his government and his party are outside his decisions and internal criticism of with regard to its functioning are beginning to be felt. intensify.
Barons in profile
The internal voices that are currently privately questioning the management of the Valencian Community are multiplying while in public silence imposes itself on the organization. Mañueco is the only regional president who spoke expressly this week about the declaration of national emergency in the Valencian Country. And he did it to contradict his counterpart. The others opted for silence, which is not usual for some leaders of the autonomous governments of the PP.
The president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, always ready to enter national debates, avoided this Wednesday answering a question that would place her either on the side of Mazón or on the side of Feijóo. Ayuso said that he was “living a dramatic moment”, that he suffered “a lot with the people of Valencia”, feeling “the helplessness generated by the fact that everyone wants to collaborate and often does not know how”. He also argued that the “bad body” that party leaders have is unimaginable.
The Madrid president did not answer the question. But neither did the other barons. No one wants to take sides publicly, because that would mean not only choosing an internal side, but also questioning their own autonomy and capabilities. Feijóo wants to use the DANA tragedy to “confront the government” and “not Mazón”, as a source from the national leadership revealed to the newspaper ‘El Mundo’ on Tuesday.
Privately, the presidents consulted by elDiario.es are calling for a “national emergency” to be declared to “do what needs to be done” in the flooded area. But in public, if there is no obligation and questions from journalists, they prefer not to speak.
This is what the rest of the regional leaders did, who chose to put themselves forward and focus their message on the aid made available to Valencians.
