ABC Editorial: Spain, without a Government

Paiporta will be recorded as the name of the scenario in which the Spanish State was portrayed in the face of the DANA tragedy that devastated Valencia. The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, joined the visit of King Felipe and Letizia, who were going to be accompanied by the Valencian president, Carlos Mazón. AND the neighbors gave vent to their angeramong tons of mud, debris and dozens of deaths. As soon as the mud balls and insults intensified, Sánchez’s escort took him away from Paiporta, while a stick flew and hit the security service of the President of the Government. Sánchez left, the Kings stayed and Mazón endured. The exemplarity of Felipe VI and Queen Letizia does not need to be glossed, because it was broadcast live. They remained firm in the purpose that had brought them to Paiporta. The Crown, in its constitutional function of representing the State, assumed the extreme gravity of the moment and lived with the desperation of citizens who knew perfectly well how to discriminate who was responsible, and who was not, for the exasperating slowness of the public response to the tragedy. They endured mud, screams, tension and verbal violence, unprecedented manifestations in the visit of the Kings to the site of a tragedy. But whoever puts the Crown and the political leaders in the same bag of popular accusations is mistaken or manipulating: the Kings continued their march, spoke with the neighbors, listened to complaints and embraced fed up and humiliated people. President Mazón was the direct recipient of the imprecations of the hundreds of citizens who surrounded the royal delegation, but he did not leave: he stayed next to the King and, with a dignity that no one can deny him, he partially redeemed his clumsy political role in the first moments of DANA.

Pedro Sánchez’s withdrawal was explained by security reasons. It was certainly like that. But the image and reality prevail over the official versions, and in the people’s retinas there will remain a President of the Government who left the place to which he had gone, perhaps with the confidence of taking refuge behind the Kings, perhaps with the illusion of being received as a ‘deus ex machina’, perhaps with the idea of ​​publicly confronting a discredited Carlos Mazón. However, Sánchez summed up his Government’s attitude towards the DANA tragedy with his withdrawal or escape, whatever you want to call it. Some strategist from La Moncloa might have thought that the citizens were not going to realize that, of the three visitors, only one, Pedro Sánchez, had it in his power to promote a state of alarm, deploy the Army, the Civil Guard and the National Police and activate state resources to respond to a national crisis. In politics, whoever can do more should do more. The reproaches against Mazón have a short history compared to the massive dimensions of the powers of the central government. And this imposture by Sánchez, this deceitful tactic of entrusting Mazón with responsibilities that were not his, is what exploded yesterday before the President of the Government in the streets of Paiporta.

The image of Sánchez protected by his personal security is the perfect graphic description of his Government in recent days: turning its back on the citizens. Only when he believed that Mazón’s political crisis was irreversible did Sánchez invent a pseudo-solemn appearance and a string of late announcements that he should have made on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. The arrogant Sánchez of 23-J – “we have won” – encountered in the Valencian town of Paiporta the worst version – violent and angry, unacceptable and condemnable without palliatives – of what many citizens think of his management.

The summary is simple and dramatic: there is no Government in Spain, understood as responsible for the political direction of the country. There is no President of the Government, but rather a position that provides benefits for minorities who, in return, keep him in power, becoming necessary collaborators in a management that neglects the common good and the real needs of society, now exposed in raw form in the province of Valencia. There is, yes, a State, and well defined in the Armed Forces, the Security Forces, the technicians and officials, all of them destined to recover, with the limitations imposed on them by the political tactics of La Moncloa, normality in Valencia. There is State because the King did not leave Paiporta this Sunday.