The official act of turning on the lights carried out this Wednesday afternoon by the mayor of València, María José Catalá, has sparked some controversy since there have been those who have considered it excessive considering that very few kilometers away, even in the three districts of the affected city in which 16 fatalities have been found, the situation continues to be tremendously complicated after the DANA on October 29.
The truth is that the event was planned as a tribute to the victims, but on social networks there have been comments criticizing, not the fact that there is Christmas decorations, but the ostentation of the event with fireworks among other elements, including the need to carry out an official act as such, when others are being suspended, such as those this weekend related to Constitution Day.
The event began at 7:00 p.m., with the inauguration of the Crystal Hall Nativity Scene, which includes scenes in tribute to the volunteers. Shortly after, he continued in the Town Hall square, which was dark and silent, although he did not officially save a minute. Shortly after, a voice-over recalled that “the water, which gives us life, a month ago, in the form of a ravine, left our blood cold.” “Although this tragedy has not taken away the illusion, the capacity for reconstruction, the dignity and the unity of the Valencian people,” said the same voice-over that then presented the performance of Rei Ortolá and the Juan Bautista Comes Choir of the José Iturbi Municipal Conservatory.
After the interpretation of the aforementioned ‘Voices of València’, the senior falleras, Berta Peiró and Lucía García, with their courts of honor, accompanied by the mayor, María José Catalá, pressed the lever that lit the 25-meter-high tree , “which this year symbolizes the ‘Star of Solidarity’ that, in addition to illuminating and generating hope and hope, aims to channel the solidarity of society,” said Catalá. The lighting of the tree was simultaneous with special effects and fireworks.
The reactions have not been long in coming. From the La Torre Neighborhood Association, president Aniuska Dolz assured questions from elDiario.es that they were unaware that the event was going to be held, but that they would not have attended anyway: “They don’t take us into account,” she lamented. The president of the Castellar-Oliveral neighborhood association, Empar Puchades, has described the act as “indecent” and has criticized that the City Council “is only interested in tourism” and is lacking “sensitivity and humanity, as well as management, it seems insufficient to me.” appropriate, there were other ways to do it.”
Municipal sources from the Government team have insisted that “the entire event was a tribute to the victims and those affected” for whom they have assured that there has been “maximum sensitivity.”
For his part, the councilor of Compromís, Pere Fuset, commented that “no one doubts that the local businesses of Valencia need their Christmas campaign to overcome this crisis. We are in contact with the merchants and we think that any support is little, but any with common sense he understands that Catalá’s Christmas event is far from the sobriety and tact that we at Compromís think would have been necessary” and added that at this Wednesday’s event “there were plenty of excesses and there was a lack of a minute of silence that if “We have seen in other spaces like the demonstration last Saturday.”
According to Fuset, “Catalá lacks empathy beyond the desire for photos, it has demonstrated it with insufficient budgets that it processed without suspending votes on days of official mourning and in a city with fatalities, and it demonstrates it when it tries to lower the solidarity to words without actions.” The Valencian mayor has stated that they do not know what “the star of solidarity” means, but he believes that “solidarity is represented more by a walkway that thousands of volunteers cross than by a star on a 25-meter tree; when the 222 victims of this tragedy have not yet received the heartfelt institutional tribute they deserve, like the one that occurred during COVID, there are excesses that can be painful; Catalá lacks lights when it comes to showing empathy with those who suffer” and concluded: “Christmas campaign and local commerce, yes, respect too.”
The socialist councilor, Nuria Llopis, has criticized that the Catalan Government “cannot sell a Christmas that has solidarity as its motto when it has not lived up to what the affected neighbors need and cannot spend more money on advertising of its solidarity that in the real aid it gives to the affected towns, the aid does not involve a Christmas of solidarity, but rather through real emergency contracts, through modifications to budgets destined for reconstruction and through direct aid.
Through social networks, the general coordinator of Esquerra Unida and former councilor of Unides Podem Rosa Pérez, affected by DANA, has commented: “And just 8 kilometers away we are without electricity in most of the streets, eating the mud and with the garages full of mud and cars”, sharing the video of the lighting of lights and fireworks.
The architect and former socialist deputy, David Calvo, he said in his X profile sharing the same video: “What the PP has just done in Valencia is a fucking shame and disgustingly frivolous. A few kilometers away there are still municipalities without electricity in the streets.”
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