Robles accuses Mazón of delay in activating the UME: “Five hours passed until he did it for the entire province”

Robles has displayed from the Senate speakers’ gallery the entire chronology of actions of the Armed Forces during Tuesday, October 29 and the following days. As noted, at 7:39 a.m. that morning the UME was already aware of several warning reports about the danger of the meteorological situation.

Given the evolution of the situation, he has assured that the UME launched the two legal mechanisms of action available to it: early warning and advanced deployment. All until at 3:59 p.m. the request to activate the emergency unit is received from the Generalitat, but only for the Utiel-Requena area, Robles stressed.

As a consequence of this activation, he assured that at 4:36 p.m. the first troops left, and at 5:35 p.m. they managed to reach the area “with serious difficulties.” Meanwhile, the UME continued to order the enlistment of more units, until 8:36 p.m. when the Generalitat expanded the request for activation of the UME for the entire province of Valencia.

“Almost five hours pass from the moment the emergency management of the Valencian Community requests the activation of the EMU only for Utiel-Requena until the activation is requested for the entire province of Valencia,” Robles noted. What’s more, it has been revealed that, in that period of time, the UME commanders themselves informed her that this request for help could not be limited to one area and had to be extended to the entire province.

“When they told me that it was going to be requested in the Requena-Utiel area, they told me, but this cannot be,” the minister said. “It still took a long time to mobilize the UME just for Utiel-Requena and another five hours to mobilize it throughout the province of Valencia.”

From there, Robles has detailed the mobilization of soldiers throughout the early hours of October 29 to 30 from the bases of Morón, León, Torrejón or Zaragoza and has vindicated the work of the Armed Forces in the face of criticism. “From the first moment they have been on the front line, when level 2 was declared there were already 96 soldiers working in that area,” he insisted.

Civil Protection System

Previously, the Minister of Defense had also debated the matter in the control session of Congress, where she insisted that the powers to deal with the crisis caused by DANA rest with the Valencian Community since the Law of the National System of Civil Protection indicates that it is up to the regional government to take the necessary measures.

This has been the response to Javier Ortega Smith, a Vox deputy, in a parliamentary question in Congress in which he blamed Robles for the “shortage of soldiers and the necessary instruments” for “correct action by the Government of Pedro Sánchez». Also, he has argued that the national Executive should have applied the National Security Lawl to solve the situation and not be “transferring responsibilities to the Valencian Government.”

During his speech, Ortega Smith asked the minister about the few troops assigned to the Valencia tragedy and about the rejection of international aid. Both questions have not received a response from the Defense Minister. «El Salvador provided 300 rescue workers and 20 tons of equipment. The Republic of Argentina offered to move white helmet units. France, 25 firefighters. The United States offered to give all available help. “He didn’t ask for it,” explained the deputy. For this and the “lack of action”, Ortega Smith accuses the Government of an “omission of the duty to provide relief.”

Thus, the former general secretary of Santiago Abascal’s party has at all times criticized the lack of agents in the most affected areas. «There are thousands of soldiers on loan and prepared to go and they have not let them go. They have sent into account drops and late. Mistreated, poorly paid… All this is encompassed by a “late action” by Pedro Sánchez’s Executive in the situation: “The Government acted, but late in time and insufficient in the means.”

Robles defends the actions of the Armed Forces and assures that the coordination of them and the troops who are there depends on “their commanders”, on the hierarchy itself within the military body. «Everything is controlled. There are military bodies on land, sea and air; adding, psychologists, psychiatrists, 12 helicopters… All with a specific command and control, with the sole purpose of helping the citizen.

Also the Minister of the Interior

The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, also appeared this Wednesday in the Congress of Deputies in another urgent questioning, this one requested by the Popular Party, to give an account of the actions carried out during the fateful October 29. The owner supports Robles’ statements and has clashed with the popular ones in the interpretation of how the state of emergency is declared in an autonomous community.

The reproaches of the popular have focused more on the omission and lack of prevention than on the response once the tragedy occurred. It rains in the wet because it is the same complaint that the PP has expressed during the appearance of Ángel Víctor Torres this morning. Even so, the Popular Party representative Carmen Navarro has not hesitated to display the rosary of warnings and negligence that occurred during the day of October 29, when the Júcar Hydrographic Conference, according to her, had a period of a few hours in which no reported on the flow that accumulated in the Poyo ravine that ended up flooding towns such as Paiporta.

“Where were you the previous hours?” was Navarro’s question to the Minister of the Interior, who responded that he was in the Senate, which is where, he said, he should be. He did not want to engage in “provocations” – that is how he called the popular deputy’s intervention – and he insisted that “this is not the time to seek political responsibilities.” Marlaska has defended his ministry’s actions during the key hours of the catastrophe and insists that the powers to deal with the consequences of DANA rest with the Mazón Government “with all the State resources at its disposal.”

But the big fight has been the interpretation made by the Government and the opposition about how the state of emergency is raised to level three. Marlaska insists: “The Government of the Valencian Community has not requested it.” The popular Navarro has assured, for its part, that “it is neither mandatory nor binding” for the regional government to request the central Executive to implement the measure.

Another very notorious reproach has been the perpetuation in office of the operational chief of the Police, José Ángel González, through the DANA aid decree, which has been used to eliminate the mandatory retirement at 65 years of age for this position. . “They have acquired the Sanchista ‘modus operandi’,” Navarro assured, alluding to an increasingly common practice among the Executive of sneaking in amendments ‘against nature’, as already happened with the parity law.