The people already have elements and are supposed to have judgment to demand responsibilities from those who continuously over decades speculate with the safety and well-being of the people.
My grandmother was waiting for me to come home from school and like other days she took me to Raimundo’s bakery to buy me a cake for my snack. When we left, water began to gush from the spindles in the street. “Lighten up,” he told me. At home, I was also coming out of the drains of the skates and some children came running from Trinidad shouting that the water is coming! Everything happened quickly, in a short time the water was up to our waists and we had to take refuge in the upstairs apartment of our neighbor, Gloria. A few days later, my grandfather and I – my grandmother wanted to stay – were rescued by a boat that took us to my parents’ house, which was dry.
It was 1961, the last greatestuaryfrom Seville. You don’t forget the things that happen to you as a child. Seen today, there were no alarms or alerts, nor anything similar to the mobilization of the State. In that flood-prone city, one of the few accurate alarms was when the water had already reached the lion’s mouth, on the Triana bridge.
Of course there were no people responsible, and it took time to recover the city, but today we live in another time, in democracy, and there should be. In a certain sense there already are: the climate deniers, the tax deniers (those who say, like the Valencian leaders and other of their coreligionists, that without taxes – to the opulent, it is understood – life is better), the urban predators. That is to say, the people already have the elements and the judgment to demand responsibilities from those who continuously over decades speculate with the security and well-being of the people, plundering the territory for their own benefit and also the public coffers, depriving us of necessary public tools; first, to resist the vengeance of nature; second, to fight against its consequences.
Will there be politicians capable of maintaining that with lower taxes, public policies can be undertaken to help and rebuild? Will there be politicians who will listen to a cousin who maintains that there is no climate change? Will there be politicians granting licenses and approving urban or infrastructure projects in flood-prone areas? Will we continue to cover channels, boulevards and streams and build boardwalks and impossible hotels?
The satellite images of Valencia after the catastrophe constitute the map of the future if we want it to never happen again with such devastating effects; In Seville at that time there were no such tools. The images on the ground are also eloquent, and prove the inefficiency, confusion, inability and lack of coordination of the responsible authorities, and should also lead to responses and responsibilities for the future. But on the latter, I am exceptive, and if you don’t check the electoral map in Galicia after the Prestige disaster; about what happened in Seville, don’t bother, in a dictatorship there were no people responsible for anything, not even irresponsible scavenger journalism, like now.
Those of my childhood were different times but today if society does not react and mature we are lost. Everything will remain a spectacle of lamentations and duels, sincere solidarity but a lot of posturing, collections without control of destinations and reproaches of responsibilities. After the demand for political responsibility there should be another preventive responsibility. The world is not going to end, it will be human stupidity that will end up extinguishing us as a species. Many questions in the air. Will there be politicians capable of maintaining that with fewer taxes, public policies can be undertaken to help and rebuild? Will there be politicians who will listen to a cousin who maintains that there is no climate change? Will there be politicians granting licenses and approving urban or infrastructure projects in flood-prone areas? Will we continue to cover channels, boulevards and streams and build boardwalks and impossible hotels? Will the predators and their media henchmen of the libertarian right back down?
Returning to Seville, will your city council continue with its mayor at the helm asking to develop the flood-prone and environmentally necessary Dehesa de Tablada? These are not only questions for political leaders, but also for the people who watch impassively at the depredation of the territory, of Mother Earth, and the depredation of the public, that which saves us, thanks to the taxes, by the way, from which they suffer the most to pay for them.
#riá
