If there is a phrase that has echoed these days of tragedy through social networks and gatherings, it is the one that the former vice president of the Generalitat Valenciana Monica Oltra pronounced in 2016, alluding to the Popular Party of the Country: ““They have been more dangerous because they were incompetent than because they were corrupt.” And it is true, and catastrophes such as the last DANA (222 dead and 32 missing at the time of writing) or the Valencia Metro accident in 2006 (43 dead, 47 injured, a lot of corruption).
Oltra is absolutely right: beyond the debate on whether the State Government should have intervened and taken control of the emergency after verifying the incompetence, non-appearance, abandonment and delay in the reaction to the effects of an unprecedented cold drop – but with prior alerts from the Aemet-Govern of Carlos Mazónthe first and most serious responsibility is that of the competent autonomous power in this State, the Valencian one. It seems impossible to make more mistakes, promulgate more lies denied again and again, launch more versions of the same fact, hide others and demonstrate more ignorance in the management of the catastrophe than that of the Valencian Government, with its president at the head.
Unfortunately, Corruption, in the long run, is also the cause of this disaster. Why were three out of ten homes (more than 75,000) affected by this latest DANA built in a flood zone during the real estate bubble (in 47 municipalities) despite this risk having been identified by the Generalitat itself and already in 2003, when it approved the Territorial Action Plan on Flood Risk Prevention in the Valencian Community (Patricova)? I highly recommend the DATADISTA investigative report on this matter, which leaves the management of the Valencian PP naked and its corrupt greed covered in mud.
Once again, the Popular Party comes to demonstrate that, in the face of misfortunes, the first thing is to save themselves, protect their power, avoid responsibilities of any kind whatsoever – lies included – and manage in the worst possible way to that all of the above (power, power, power) work in coordination. The latest DANA tragedy is, unfortunately, just one more example.
The management of the sinking of the oil tanker Prestige off the Galician coast (2002) was, surely, the most striking example of incompetence, ignorance and contempt towards citizens on the part of the Galician PPbut not only, since José María Aznar governed in Madrid and only knew how to make a fool of himself with the lies of his crisis Cabinet and explanations like “a few threads of plasticine” from its spokesperson (Galician, for more gossip) Mariano Rajoymoved to the site of the most tragic ecological catastrophe in the history of Spain to make everything worse with his party colleagues in Galicia and move the ship out to sea. It was a disaster and, beyond the irrecoverable coastal and maritime devastation, The Prosecutor’s Office estimated the losses caused at 4.3 billion euros. Where were those responsible for the Aznar Government? As the president of the Xunta and founder of the PP, Manuel Fragathe Minister of Development, Alvarez Helmets, He was hunting; the Environment, Matasin Doñana with the Interior, Acebesand that of Health, Pastor. And? And nothing, it was the weekend and the competitions were Galician, so like Mazón, in the hours of the deadly start of the DANA, Fraga was missing, hunting while the Prestige was sinking.
Just like the mayor of Madrid Ana Botella when she went to a luxury spa in Portugal with her husband, former president Aznar, and family during the Madrid Arena tragedy (2012), in which five girls were crushed to death in an event full of irregularities and favoritism. “First things come first,” says a pro from Lugo, and the Aznar-Botella family was the priority, dead or not.
At least, they did not do as in the accident in Türkiye in Yakovlev 42 (2003), the Yak-42so that no one would find out about the negligence or something worse? with the transportation of members of the Armed Forces, the Ministry of Defense of the superOpus (impeccable morals, they try to sell us) Federico Trillo ordered to close coffins with mixed limbs of several corpses in each one. 75 people died, 62 Spanish soldiers and their families were ignored, threatened and despised by the exalted slimes with the big flags (tell me what you brag about…).
There was more: the Alvia accident in Santiago de Compostela (2013), a closing of ranks between PP and PSOE to avoid getting to the bottom of the issue when it was investigated: 80 dead, nearly 150 injured. The driver and an Adif official, guilty. Meanwhile, the European Union (EU), its Railway Agency, extended responsibility to several governments, that is, to PP and PSOE: a risk analysis had to have been carried out on the closed Angrois curve. ¿And? And nothing; what was said: closing ranks.
There’s more, they all sound familiar: the lies of 11-M 2004 by the Aznar Government to blame ETA and, later, the Zapatero Government of a brutal jihadist attack in Madrid. The harrowing deaths in residences of older people from Madrid during the covid pandemic (7,291), without the possibility of treatment or any dignity. The construction of the Metro line 7B in San Fernando de Henares (Madrid), which sank a residential complex, with demolitions, threats of collapse, conditions of all kinds and the general stress of a population to which no one since the Ayuso Government gives answers other than uninhabitability and construction of a park in the area that the president announced and that further angered those who were left homeless due to the incompetence of the successive executives of the CAM (PP).
There is time to clarify responsibilities, say the institutions, with more conviction than others… It is true, but journalism, the ditto newspaper archives, the facts cannot be kept silent and we are here to denounce them and remember them. There are many, always too many. Power, power, power…
#Gotera #Otilio
