Felipe González, who was president of the Government of Spain between 1982 and 1996 and who is now estranged from the also socialist Pedro Sánchez, has wanted to assume leadership in the management of the 1983 floods with the epicenter in Bilbao but which also affected the rest of Bizkaia. , to Gipuzkoa, to Álava, to Navarra, to Iparralde, to Cantabria and Burgos. He has done so in supposed contrast with the current management of the Valencia crisis. His reflections, closer to the opposition’s argument than to that of his party, contrast with the reality of those events, in which the State handed over “supreme command” in Euskadi to the lehendakari, then Carlos Garaikoetxea, of the PNV and a few years later founder of EA. The newspaper archive shows that Garaikoetxea, 86 years old today, coordinated the actions of the resources of the newly created Basque autonomy, still scarce, and of the State bodies, including the three Armies (Land, Sea and Air), the Civil Guard , the National Police, the Higher Police Corps and other means from all over Spain.
“I agreed with González that the direction of the entire device, both state and regional organizations, would remain under my command. I had supreme command of everything, of the Army [de los tres]of the Civil Guard and of the incipient Autonomous Police,” Garaikoetxea himself told EiTB on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of those floods, which left around forty dead and very important damages, which were initially estimated at 200,000 million pesetas ( 1,200 euros at the 2022 exchange rate but more than 5,000 when inflation was applied). 105 Basque municipalities (now they are 252) were declared a “catastrophic zone” and 50,000 workers or merchants were suddenly left without a way of life. “Those hours were really dramatic, because you have to think that back then we didn’t have cell phones or other phones to know what was happening around us. I had to direct the operations almost blindly,” added the Lehendakari himself in an interview with this newspaper in 2023.
This is confirmed by journalist Gorka Landaburu, who covered those events for ‘Cambio 16’ and who these days has shown in X his complaint about González’s insinuations. “Garaikoetxea quickly intervened. The same afternoon he arrived in Bilbao,” he recalls on the other end of the phone.
Early on Friday, August 26, 1983, a collaborator from the National Institute of Meteorology (INM, currently Aemet) in the province of Gipuzkoa reported that a rain gauge had already recorded unusually high data, 150 liters per square meter. “All the alarms went off,” Margarita Martín, the head of Aemet in Euskadi, also said in 2008. In 2023, Aemet added this: “During the afternoon of that day, in view of new data and after a meeting of several meteorologists, it was found that the situation was more dangerous than initially thought and it was decided that It had to be notified in some way. But at that time there was no system of warnings or effective information to the public except, if anything, some hourly news bulletins on Spanish National Radio in which brief meteorological information prepared by some meteorologists from the INM itself was broadcast. The situation was communicated to them and they made some allusion to it, but I don’t think it was in a way that could in any way constitute a true warning to the population.”
The alerts may not have reached the entire population as they could have done today, but there are images of the Seat 131 Supermirafiori of the National Police warning with megaphones of the risks on the banks of the Bilbao estuary. There was also a crisis table from the first moment. Garaikoetxea was installed in the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, whose top political official was the person who would later succeed him as Lehendakari, José Antonio Ardanza. Later, when the main focus of the problem moved to Bizkaia, the command bridge was moved to a State building, to the headquarters of the civil Government, current Provincial Subdelegation, one of the few points with electricity and supplies in the middle of a devastated city. ‘El País’ reported that also in Madrid “since the possibility of a strong storm occurring was foreseen on Friday morning” “a coordination body headed by the director of the Ministry of the Interior was created in State Security, Rafael Vera”, later one of those convicted for his participation in the GAL.
The Lehendakari, who did not take off his rubber boots for several days, was also speaking with González and the head of state, Juan Carlos I, who was on vacation at his summer residence in the Balearic Islands. Within 24 hours, the President of the Government flew over the devastated areas by helicopter. After 48 hours the king did the same. Almost like a carbon copy of what happened in 2024, it was Sunday and he arrived with his wife, Sofia from Greece. Garaikoetxea acted as a guide for them at some of the critical points. There is no evidence that incidents occurred despite the turbulent times of those years in Euskadi.
What did the opposition do? Alianza Popular was led by former Franco minister Manuel Fraga, who also visited Euskadi although he received criticism for his past, such as the massacre of the Armed Police in Vitoria on March 3, 1976. The right-wing leader described on the ground as The actions of the González Government are “reasonable”, although AP initially flirted with demanding a state of alarm for the State to assume control, according to ‘El País’. He also spoke with the Lehendakari and valued inter-institutional coordination.
Finally, it was estimated that the rainfall on the critical day exceeded 500 liters per square meter. They arrived after a whole week of rain. As in 2024, cars were swept away – according to Landaburu, 300 vehicles went down the river in Bilbao’s Arenal – and there were people missing. In the center of Bilbao there are some plaques with the marks of how far the water reached and, in some cases, it exceeds the doors of bars and establishments. Martín explained in 2008 that until then these records had never been reached and concluded that it was a “cold drop”, what is now also known as DANA. There is data of a mass of very warm air in contact with another mass of very cold air. An official report from the Bilbao City Council pointed out more than four decades ago the effects of “climate change” in the area.
One of the few women with a position of responsibility at the time, María Esther Solabarrieta, a technician in the Environment area who later held positions of responsibility in the Bizkaia Provincial Council and the Basque Government, explains that coordination with the State It was essential because the newly created structure of the autonomous government was very small. “We didn’t have a damn,” he says ironically. The Civil Protection teams had been configured just a few months before and the first Ertzaintza agents had entered the Arkaute academy to train in 1982 and their deployment was very limited. One fact: the Bilbao Civil Protection team did not have any boats and required a government permit to break the windows of a sports store to confiscate its zodiac.
These days it has been quantified that there are 10,000 mobilized soldiers from the three Armies. The figure seems exaggerated in light of the 8,000 total troops referred to in September 1983. This figure includes the three Armies (Land, 2,500 troops, Sea, 1,000, and Air, undetermined), the three corps of the State (Civil Guard, National Police and Superior Police Corps, now extinct), to the Ertzaintza, to the local and provincial bodies and to the Firefighters. In any case, the figure of 8,000 is not a minor figure since it is the equivalent of the entire current staff planned for the Ertzaintza.
His mission was not easy. Bermeo, for example, was held incommunicado for 48 hours. Only two days after the torrential rains, a radio amateur managed to communicate with the Bilbao crisis table and only then were Navy ships, Air Force helicopters and ground troops able to arrive. They delivered food, drinking water and medicines (and vaccines) to a devastated town of 19,000 inhabitants with significant health problems. Some data suggest that, in three days, the Armies delivered 62,000 loaves of bread, 106,000 liters of water and 40,000 of milk.
The general consensus is that coordination was effective, although there were some attempts at confrontation. Vice President Mario Fernández, later a banker, congratulated the Ertzaintza for its work in the midst of the crisis without mentioning the State Security Forces. The civil governor of Bizkaia, Julián Sancristóbal, another person convicted by the GAL, did something similar but in reverse and omitted the Basque Police. He was also heard on an open microphone calling the volunteers “a bunch of lazy people” and “sons of bitches.”
Other leaders stopped the outbreak of conflict. “President Garaikoetxea knows that the State Government is at his side to save Euskadi from the situation,” declared Ramón Jáuregui, then González’s delegate in Euskadi and later vice president or minister, among other positions. “A body that, in order to care for the population in a catastrophe of this type, loses four of its men deserves to take our hats off,” added the Basque Minister of the Interior, Luis María Retolaza.
He was referring to an episode experienced in Llodio by the Civil Guard. In the second town of Álava by population and one of the points hardest hit by the catastrophe, a lieutenant and three agents who participated in the rescue of a young woman lost their lives and did not achieve their objective. In that municipality, the third lehendakari directly involved in these events was then mayor, a very young Juan José Ibarretxe (26 years old), who also did not take off his boots and, from the cleaning and rescue work, praised the work of this body and sent a condolences to the families of the deceased. Another even younger politician, Iñigo Urkullu (22 years old), made his debut on a platform in those days at a PNV event with the slogan “We will leave”, the same one he wanted to use expressly in 2020 in the electoral campaign that began after the confinement by the COVID-19.
“An Army general stationed in Llodio told me that he had witnessed many catastrophes, but he had never seen spirit, mobilization and joy like here. I was amazed. Necessity was made a virtue. There was help and solidarity from all colors and latitudes, even artists and politicians who live in my antipodes,” Garaikoetxea congratulated himself. The mayor of Bilbao, José Luis Robles, also from the PNV, also expressed his gratitude in the Senate to all the Spanish people for their solidarity and valued inter-institutional cooperation. After the floods, an exceptional event also occurred: Garaikoetxea also assumed the fiscal responsibility of the Basque Government over the provincial treasuries and approved an extraordinary surcharge on personal income tax to obtain funds for reconstruction. It has never happened again.
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