The despair of a people who cannot even bury their dead, added to the presence of ultra agitators with a unique opportunity to have the highest authorities of the State very close, led on Sunday to attacks against the president of the government and the kings of Spain. . Was there a security breach in Paiporta? The consulted sources from the information services and others dedicated to escort work agree on the impossibility of completely guaranteeing the integrity of Felipe VI and Pedro Sánchez in a scenario like the one that the King’s House insisted on to visit.
“If you want, I will not come and I will stay in Madrid,” said the monarch to one of the people who criticized him for his visit. The head of state’s statement explains why political decisions come first and security systems adapt to them. The service of the Household of the King, entrusted to the Civil Guard, acts as on other occasions. He went there before the arrival of the head of state and what he discovered cannot be compared to anything before: Felipe VI and Queen Letizia would witness a scene of chaos.
In this framework, any action of previous information agents is impossible to reproduce. What threat would they detect among the individuals busy removing mud and piling up their belongings?, asked sources in this specialty. And the security cordons around personalities? It is precisely these rings that cannot be introduced if what the House of the King was looking for was direct contact between Felipe VI and Doña Letizia with those affected by the floods.
Even in this context, police surveillance of the network is evident, with far-right groups live-streaming their movements in the disaster zone. Among the alarms is also the message of the agitator Javier Negre, a figure close to the Popular Party – President Mazón himself hugs him in a recent video – in which he warns against the visit of the authorities and slips an incitement to violence: “If you are close, you already know it. PS: the king is not to blame.
All these indicators are minor when the decision to visit the ground zero of the tragedy was taken by the Maison du Roi, whose security service directed the device, as always happens when the monarch is present alongside other authorities . The Moncloa security service, made up of the national police, took the decision to remove the president from office and did not even have the possibility of avoiding the attack he suffered, the most serious incident of the day. Experts consider it reckless, from a security perspective, that Felipe VI continued in the area after Sánchez’s attack and received insults and mud.
With his angry sentence, Felipe VI had answered the question of whether it was worth it, at least for him, to risk what ultimately happened. But there is another element that the consulted sources indicate as definitive for assuming this risk: introducing into the equation the fact that, in the past, the presence of the royal family has acted as a “balm” against the indignation of the citizens in pain scenarios. and rage. In Paiporta, the balm was diluted. This did not help avoid anger against Sánchez or Carlos Mazón. This time it didn’t even serve to involve the monarchs themselves.
The funeral of the 11M: a precedent which leads to error
The royal family had several precedents regarding the reaction of victims to which it could resort by mistake: the Lorca earthquake, the Alvia accident or the funeral of the 11M. The scale of the tragedy in Valencia makes the memory of the terrorist attacks in Atocha, which left 192 dead, inevitable. Everyone’s funeral took place in the Almudena Cathedral, 12 days after the bombs exploded.
Meanwhile, the PP government’s handling of the tragedy in the hours that followed caused an electoral reversal. To the tears that the losses had produced were already added the proofs of the official lies. And in this scenario, the figures of Juan Carlos I, Queen Sofía and Prince Felipe VI and Doña Letizia became emotional support for the family members.
At the end of this ceremony, Queen Sofia burst into tears, Juan Carlos I and his son embraced those affected, Letizia ended up holding the photo of a person who died on the trains that a member of her family gave her had given… A single cry accusing Aznar of The tragedy was heard at the start of the event. The President of the Generalitat at the time, Pasqual Maragall, would later say that he had contacted the interim president to tell him that he found it “unfair”.
At that time, the conspiracy theory had not yet poisoned part of the Spanish people, as it would in the following months. But the current scenario is radically different. The proliferation of social networks and the rise of the far right transform any event into a quagmire of hoaxes which makes political competition unbearable, with a Popular Party and media which often get carried away.
In this climate, the tragedy caused by DANA in Valencia has provided fertile ground for the creators of lies and the media that coexist with them, and not just for far-right activists online. Some of those who previously demanded a clear condemnation of violence when discussing any political issue, no matter how far from ETA’s terrorist activity, have just introduced a “but” into the conversation. And they did it to explain the attack on the President of the Government of Paiporta. This time, the attack is the subject of a “but…” condemnation.
