Summary
Amidst the devastation of the floods in Valencia, Spain, an outpouring of solidarity has emerged, with thousands of volunteers assisting in cleanup efforts. However, anger is growing over the slow response from authorities, with many residents feeling abandoned and criticizing the lack of adequate warning systems. The Spanish government has deployed additional troops and police to aid in relief efforts.
I will never understand why these situations are not dealt with by the military on large scale. These kinds of things seem like ideal exercises for the military as well. Large scale quick mobilisation, crisis and chaos all around. Need for lots of heavy equipment, tents, medical, food…
If the optics is an issue buy them orange coveralls for these kind of things.
Spanish here. We have an army emergency unit with 4000 people just for this.
One needs to know that Spain is more of a federation than Germany or USA, as silly as it sounds, with regions being Autonomies that have more freedom from the central government than other places. This is a result of the end of the dictatorship in the 70s.
Here, the regional government received alerts from the central weather agency (AEMET) at 7am. They ignored them, (they had already reduced the staff in the regional emergency department). The central weather agency kept sending them updates with record breaking numbers,and the regional government completely ignored them. The TV cameras started recording the tsunami disaster at ~7pm. The regional government sent the alarms at ~10pm, hours after people were already dead.
Then, the regional government blocked the central govenrment from sending help, and didn’t ask themselves. By law, the regional government is the one that needs to make the decisions on how and when get the help and declare the emergency. They just didn’t. They are unfit for governing. They should go to jail.
Since the regional government, corrupt, is from one side of the political spectrum, and the central one is from the other side of the spectrum, you get a lot of apologists saying that “is everyone’s fault, miscommunication”. Make no mistake. They are aware, and choose to misrepresent the issue.
You can’t establish the precedent of breaking the law to bring out the army on the streets. Follow-up central governments may misuse it. Particularly in Spain, with all the history of terrorism, seccesionism, rising far-right, and a country divided by half politically that still hasn’t healed the mess left over by the untouched fascist dictatorship we had in the past.
The end result is that in other countries the responsible people (the regional gov) would resign. Here, i doubt that will happen… And rinse and repeat.
Thanks for this breakdown, I can see why people are protesting. The situation is fucked
Whoa… TIL.
Spaniard here, citizens are really pissed at the government for not having deployed the army in time and in vast numbers… it truly is a shame how inefficiently politicians are managing the situation, they’re mostly focused on blaming each other and pointing fingers, surprising, isn’t it?
It’s something that should have a pre made plan that is just enacted. Disaster happens, declare emergency, kick it to the Bureau that oversees disaster response … which includes the military…
Yup, there’s an emergency response task force called UME which is supposed to do just that, but it’s proved to be insufficient and too little, too late
Because most people see the military as aggressively hostile. The last thing they want is to see their own country’s military marching through the streets for whatever reason. Especially in Spain, where it has a bit of a nasty history.
That too I understand. Hence no military dress, but the equipment… temporary bridger, pop up medical facilities, engineering corps, so much to gain too.
So I think it would be worthwhile to see in what form this can be done. As the scale of what happened in Spain is just mind boggling. The picture of the entire street blocked with a wall of cars piled 2 stories high… so many dead… more homeless…
On the flipside in the US, our last climate change fueled disaster had rampant conspiracy theories about government weather control devices and FEMA doing… idk something nefarious.
The lies that Y’all queda spread on this where insane. Literally undermining the help.
You don’t need to convince me of the utility of it. Unlike the United States, Spain doesn’t have a national guard.
The people of Spain are already pretty pissed. The government is probably not interested in something that will anger them further. Of course, that leaves the government of Spain in a tough spot.
What they should do, in my own opinion, is to seize on this moment of the surge in volunteers and step in to help organize the effort better.
I’m not digging, but why do you know so much? Got something fun for us to read?
Because I’m 45 and went to a private school in the 90s.
United States education system was a lot better back then.
And, yes. You should read paradise lost by John Milton. It’s the story of how Lucifer became Satan (and, really, the story of the most primeval fight for independence ever told). It’s both apocryphal and hated by the Catholic Church, but the source of 99% of everything we know about Satan.
Just make sure to get an annotated version, because it’s written in 15th century iambic pentameter (like Shakespeare, but less humorous). It’s a bit much without annotations to help understand it