Valencia: Just another chapter in the decline of Europe’s corrupt authroitarian political class
Toni Strubell is a former MP in the Catalan Parliament, journalist, and author of What Catalans Want
Núria Bassa Camps is a Catalan writer and photographer
Llegeix en català AQUI
October 29 will always remain as part of the collective memory of the Valencian people as the most striking “natural” catastrophe in recent history. The phenomenon has been so devastating that it has transcended the Spanish media context reaching the headlines of all major international news media.
Over and above being a perfect example of the kind of disaster that climate change experts have predicted, the symptomatology that derives from the case covers a wide range of sins: crass political inaction; class discrimination; an absolute disregard for the reality of climate change; callous populism, and far right intoxication; monarchic opportunism; you name it. Under normal circumstances it would suffice to encourage the press, institutions and international leaders to take a closer look at the poor state of democracy and governance in the Spanish State. But will it? We fear not.
Nevertheless, the international press has gone into some detail – often with a stunned sense of wonder- regarding the insufficiencies of the Spanish political machinery involved in this case. The agenda of the Valencian president on the day of the flood (October 29) could have served as a script for a great Costa-Gavras film. The fact is that the imponderable institutional absence of Mr. Mazón is seen almost universally as the first cause of the high mortality (at the time of writing over 210 dead with some forty missing) caused by the lack of any form of public emergency warning until well into the evening of the 29th when it was irremediably late.
This factor was aggravated by the fact that it affected some highly populated areas where it had barely rained. Because the immense amount of water that flooded the plain – four times the normal volume of the river Ebro river itself- largely originated in the Poio ravine in the hilly hinterland. Was this an unforeseeable event? In no way! It is at this very point that the periodic floods that have historically ravaged the centre of Valencia have originated. And were there no instruments to warn of these floods? There were, and they did their job perfectly. Those who failed were the Valencian government politicians who were not around to authorize the protocols that would activate the alarm systems. To get an idea of the degree of irresponsibility involved, suffice it to remember the inexperienced minister of Emergencies proudly announcing that he had been “duly” present at his office at 10 in the morning… the day after the tragedy!
Oddly enough, the question of class discrimination arising from the case seems to have attracted less interest in the media. What areas did the flood affect? Can all the damage be put down to fate? There is talk of the “Tragedy of Valencia”, yes. But one cannot forget that, in contrast with other episodes, the well-to-do city of Valencia has been left practically unscathed by this catastrophe. And there is a reason for this. To prevent the city’s main river from damaging the city centre, the administration chose to divert it along a new course opened to the south in 1969. And it is this new riverbed that channels today’s floods to the extensive series of towns and villages that pan out to the south of Valencia. They are largely made up of popular low-rise housing with a high density of shops and light industry. It is in this environment that most of the victims and material losses occurred. Once again, thus, it is these popular working class districts rather than the Valencian capital itself -characterised by its high-rise blocks, gentrification and speculative megalomania- that have paid much of the bill that the episode has entailed.
But rather than insisting on the political illiteracy of the Valencian leaders (of the Popular Party, often seen as the most corrupt party in Europe), we must consider the Valencian tragedy as the epitome of contempt for the reality of climate change. After winning the last regional elections, the PP formed a coalition government with the far-right party VOX (disregarding the “sanitary cordon” that some European Popular Party members do abide by) and a series of maverick appointments were made that appointed a bullfighter to head a ministry and a man lacking experience to manage the Emergency area. But that was not all. The first thing Mazón’s government did was dismantle a special Emergency Unit that the previous socialist government had created. The scandal becomes even more outrageous when we discover that a large portion of the funds made available were to be reallocated to promote bullfighting, Valencia being the Spanish region that currently sports the highest budget for this indecent practice. It is difficult to imagine a more contemptuous attitude to the climate change crisis though few trust that the current EU leadership will take steps to censor this policy.
The tragedy has predictably given rise to a whole series of parallel events that once again demonstrate the poor quality of Spain’s democracy. For exemple, in the cynical populism and intoxication that the extreme right has been able to display during the whole episode. Five days after the tragedy, an incident-studded royal visit to the severly affected town of Paiporta led to scenes worthy of in-depth analysis. Not surprisingly, the version of the visit given in the mainstream media involved blind praise for the figure of King Felipe VI who “faced the madding crowd” while being peppered with mud bombs. But will this “heroic” version flourish? It is unlikely to do so among the popular classes. For given the response received in Paiporta, the king’s party’s plans to visit other affected areas had to be suspended ipso facto. In another context, no explanation has been given about the king’s cordial and protocol-free meeting with people clearly identified as neo-Nazis during the Paiporta visit, an episode strategically overlooked by the mainstream press. Indeed, was the whole visit not designed to downstage president Sánchez’s participation and divert attention away from the real villains of the tragedy?
But it was to be at the massive demonstration that took place in Valencia on November 9 that the popular response to the tragedy must be gauged. To put it mildly, not a drop of conciliatory attitude was to be registered with regard to the administration. In answer to the 200+ dead, more than sixty social and trade union organizations rallied under a general call for Mazon’s resignation. A conservative estimate of 130,000 demonstrators filled the streets -one of the biggest demonstrations registered in Valencia since the Iraq war- demanding a full investigation into responsibilities for Mazon’s government’s mismanagement of the emergency arising from the DANA.
Yet despite the massive attendance at the rally, the response of the Valencian PP to the demonstration has been anything but self-critical. They even went so far as to issue an X message minimizing the massive protest which they referred to as “politicized”. They even blamed the Catalanists for the protest by proclaiming that “the Catalanist entities of the ‘Catalan Countries’ have rallied to create disruption and cause the collapse of the city of Valencia”. Stark raving madness… Yet the PP leaders blindly insist on defending their management of the disaster and denying that serious mistakes had been made. This has understandably exasperated society in a region where PP conservative policies go relatively unchallenged. Thus it is significant that organizations such as the Valencian Union of Teachers should have accused the government of “not having learned anything 48 hours after the tragedy”; or that the generally moderate Valencian Federation of Student Parental Associations (FAMPA) should have expressed their disgust at the “disastrous management” of the regional government, pointing out that it had been their own members who had had to take the decision to close schools and send students home “because nothing was being ordered by the Generalitat and the situation was already serious”.
These and other protests that are being made public, along with others that will surely surface, all weaken the position of Mazón’s government. No matter how hard they try to dilute their responsibility by turning the problem into one caused by “all administrations”, Mazón has had no alternative but to recognize that he did not handle the flood crisis to perfection. Although Mazón seems reluctant to resign -his legal immunity from prosecution depends on his being in office- the crisis will surely call for dismissals and changes in his government. It may also affect Feijoo’s PP in general in a way not to dissimilar to the penalization they met with for the mismanagement of the March 11th 2004 Jihadist train bombings in Madrid or Rajoy’s disastrous handling of the 2002 Prestige oil tanker disaster, both of which displayed a degree of incompetence and sick callousness that would surely have brought about the fall of a good many state governments had these episodes occurred elsewhere in the EU. Not in Spain though, the EU’s regular exception on so many counts.
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