“We are facing a national emergency situation. The Government of Spain has to be in charge.” The phrase was pronounced last Monday by the president of Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco. The PP baron thus assumed the position of his leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and stood against his Valencian counterpart, Carlos Mazón. The ‘president’ of the Generalitat has not received a single explicit support from any of the most important leaders of his party for his decision not to delegate control of the management of DANA, which has caused more than 200 deaths and immense material damage.
Mazón is increasingly alone in his defense of a political decision that already seems irreversible: to retain the command in his person after the worst storm recorded in decades and whose consequences are still not quantifiable in all its extremes. And his party has shown him at various times the way to follow to have the support of the entire organization.
The first was Feijóo himself last Thursday when, with citizens still waiting for the deployment of human and material resources, he demanded that the Government declare a “national emergency.” A formula that, according to the law, would give operational command to the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska. And I would take it away from Mazón himself.
The Valencian president responded minutes later in an appearance with Pedro Sánchez in which he rectified his leader. Mazón valued the “collaboration” of the central government from the first moment, which would justify not delegating power.
On the same Thursday, the Andalusian president, Juan Manuel Moreno, also said that the catastrophe caused by DANA is “an emergency of national interest” whose management and coordination had to be assumed by Marlaska “to mobilize, direct and coordinate state resources.” Andalusia was also affected by DANA, although with more luck than the Valencian Community and no human victims had to be counted. Since then, Moreno has been silent on this issue and, like other regional leaders, has focused his message on the help made available to Mazón.
During the weekend, an alleged internal “report” was leaked that included the national PP’s arguments: the Government should have taken command on Tuesday, even before the floods. If the alert was not sent before eight in the afternoon, when the water was already flooding hundreds of kilometers of territory, it was Sánchez’s fault for not declaring the emergency, which in reality was an attempt to hide the errors in the actions. of Mazón.
This Monday the pressure on Mazón became more forceful from his own ranks. After Mañueco’s words, Feijóo insisted more clearly on his message. “We continue to request, as we did from day one, the declaration of a national emergency,” he said in a statement, without questions from journalists. “And, if he decides, he has our support,” he added.
But that first person plural does not seem to bind the entire PP because the Valencian Community does not follow the strategy set by the national leadership of Madrid’s Calle de Génova. Mazón tried to take shelter in the first days behind his Minister of Justice, Salomé Pradas, but had to come out to publicly assume responsibility on Saturday, after the appearance of Pedro Sánchez. It was when he demanded that, instead of putting the Valencian authorities at the service of the sole command of the Government, it was the ministers who placed themselves at his command in different work groups that he was going to launch, four days after the flood.
Since then, Mazón has tried to hold on to control over the management of the tragedy as a means to shield himself at the head of the Generalitat when part of his Government and his party are outside of his decisions and internal criticism of his operation begins to intensify.
Barons in profile
Those internal voices that for the moment privately question the management of the Valencian Community are multiplying while in public silence has been imposed on the organization. Mañueco is the only regional president who this week has expressly spoken about the declaration of the national emergency in the Valencian Country. And he did it to contradict his counterpart. The rest have opted for silence, something that is not usual for some of the people who lead autonomous governments of the PP.
The president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, always ready to enter national debates, this Wednesday avoided answering a question that would place her either on the side of Mazón or on the side of Feijóo. Ayuso said he was “living in a dramatic moment,” suffering “a lot with the people of Valencia,” feeling “the helplessness generated by everyone wanting to collaborate and often not knowing how.” He also argued that the “bad body” that the party leaders have is not imaginable.
The president of Madrid did not respond to the question. But neither have other barons. No one wants to take sides in public because it would mean not only choosing an internal side, but also calling into question their own autonomy and capacity. Feijóo wants to use the DANA tragedy to “confront with the Government” and “not with Mazón”, as revealed by a source from the national leadership to the newspaper ‘El Mundo’ this Tuesday.
Privately, presidents consulted by elDiario.es do ask that a “national emergency” be declared to “do what has to be done” in the flooded area. But in public, if it is not mandatory and questions from journalists, they prefer not to speak.
This is what the rest of the regional leaders have done, who have chosen to put themselves in profile and focus their message on the help made available to Valencians.
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