The “Cantar de Mio Cid” is a poem in medieval Castilian composed around 1200. It recounts the heroic exploits of the Castilian knight Don Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, better known as El Cid Campeador, in the twilight years of his life. The poem is a story about honour; El Cid is banished after being unjustly accused of robbery but wins a royal pardon after taking Valencia from the Almoravid invaders, Muslim fanatics who had launched a jihad from North Africa. There is a very popular phrase from the Cantar that for many people sums up the story of the Cid: “What a good vassal if he had a good lord.” This phrase has regained all its meaning with the events of recent days in Valencia.
Faced with the ineffectiveness of the central and regional governments, thousands of volunteers organised themselves in order to do what the state was not doing: help the victims of the floods caused by the DANA weather system, a “cold drop” that hit the province of Valencia on October 29th. The Catholic Church, NGOs and youth organisations, such as Revuelta, organised the collection of food and donations. Thousands of people mobilized to bring aid to the affected populations, who had been completely helpless and abandoned to their fate. Like the Cid, the Spaniards still have honour left. The vassal proved to be far superior to his ‘lord’ in a catastrophe that has affected half a million people, 325,000 of whom, according to the European satellite system Copernicus, are at ground zero of the disaster. The numbers speak for themselves: more than 200 people have already died; more than a thousand are reported missing; 100,000 cars have been reported as total losses; 77,000 homes have been affected; 18,000 businesses have been destroyed. The material damage is incalculable.
But where was the state? It all started on the wrong foot. The rain warning that the AEMET (Spanish Meteorological Agency) issued at 7:30 on Tuesday was already too late. Barely five hours after the warning, the president of the Autonomous Community of Valencia, Carlos Mazón of the Partido Popular (PP), gave a press conference to announce that the storm would diminish in intensity after 6 p.m. because it would “move to the province of Cuenca.” The opposite happened, and an hour later, the DANA had already caused hurricane-force winds, rising rivers, and overflowing ravines.
This tragedy was compounded by the government’s response. Instead of immediate cooperation between central and regional governments to help the hundreds of thousands of affected Spaniards, instead of doing what a real ruler should do, a political game was played to determine who had the competence to intervene. The government claimed that it needed the permission of the autonomous community to send the army to Valencia. Pedro Sánchez cynically put it days later: “If they need more resources, let them ask for them.”
It is beyond immoral to discuss competence issues during a catastrophe, but in Spain we live in a dystopia governed by functionaries, the dumbest and the most evil of the class. As usual, Pedro Sánchez’s government lied. It can declare a state of emergency without the permission of the autonomous community and deploy the army, with or without a state of emergency. The first paragraph of article 4 of Organic Law 4/1981 of 1 June allows the government to declare a state of alarm in “catastrophes, calamities or public misfortunes, such as earthquakes, floods, urban and forest fires or accidents of great magnitude.” The national emergency, which is foreseen for emergencies of national interest and can only be decreed by the ministry of the interior, could have also been used.
The military, the fire brigade, the police, and the Guardia Civil asked to be sent to Valencia in vain; some even volunteered, but they were rejected. The Ministry of the Interior did not start sending reinforcements until November 2nd. As for the army, the UME (Unidad Militar de Emergencias, Military Emergency Unit) was sent from the start, although the minister of defence, Margarita Robles, blamed the Valencian government for the slow military deployment. On the first of November, it was announced that more units would be sent in three days’ time. When Spain sent military aid to Morocco after the 2023 earthquake, the same minister said: “We will send whatever is necessary, because everyone knows that the first hours, especially when there are people under the rubble, are crucial.”
Other countries have also offered help. The French interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, contacted his Spanish counterpart, Fernando Grande Marlaska, to send a support team of 250 firefighters, but was told it was not necessary. However, French volunteer firefighters have arrived, such as the team from the French Disaster Relief Group (GSCF), which arrived in the town of Alfafar on Friday. A video shows their arrival and the disbelief of the French firefighters when they discovered that they were the first emergency team to arrive in the town, one of the worst affected. Other offers of help, many of which have yet to be responded to, have come from Argentina, Portugal, Italy, and Poland, among others.
Malgorzata Wolczyk, a Polish journalist who knows Spain very well, confessed to me her confusion at how events have unfolded. She compared what happened in Valencia with the severe floods that affected Central Europe, including Poland, in September. The human and material losses were much less because of the immediate arrival of the “civilian army,” created by the previous Law and Justice (PiS) government, trained for special tasks and for combating natural disasters. Unlike Spanish volunteers who arrive by their own means, the Polish were sent to the disaster area in special trains. Even the prime minister, Donald Tusk, arrived immediately at the site of the flooding. For Wolczy, it is incomprehensible that “a country that is so rich and better organised in many areas than we are, should leave its affected citizens without help.”
Of course, Sánchez was not the only politician to turn the catastrophe into a political game. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who offered EU assistance, said that what happened “is the dramatic reality of climate change.” The dramatic reality von der Leyen is talking about is something that predates the climate fanaticism movement to which the European president belongs. The first known floods in the city of Valencia occurred in 1321 and 1328. One of the worst floods took place on 27 September 1517, between the festivities to celebrate the arrival of the new king and future Emperor Charles V. In October 1957 there was another cold drop, which left more than 300 dead. This disaster led General Franco’s government to draw up what is known as Plan Sur, which stipulated the construction of the new Turia riverbed between 1958 and 1973, which has protected Valencia on this and other occasions.
We also have an example of terrible floods in which the state’s response was totally different. It was in Bilbao in 1983, also under a Socialist government. The flood caused 35 deaths, but the response was immediate, and the action of volunteers and the deployment of thousands of army troops prevented greater harm.
I began by talking about the Cantar del Mio Cid to distinguish the Spaniards with honour from those without it. I am going to finish with a play, “Fuenteovejuna,” written by Lope de Vega between 1612 and 1614. The play recounts the events of the night of 23-24 April 1476, when the residents of Fuente Ovejuna took up arms against the Commander Major of the Order of Calatrava, Fernán Gómez de Guzmán, and stoned him to death for all the damage the nobleman had done to the town. When the judges looked for the culprit, the only answer they got was: “Fuente Ovejuna did it.” From this story, popularised by Lope de Vega, a saying was born: “Todos a una como en Fuenteovejuna” (All together as in Fuenteovejuna), a lesson of what happens when a whole town unites to defend its interests or face injustice.
On Sunday, November 3rd, five days after the tragedy, the king and queen of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, and Carlos Mazón went to the town of Paiporta. I don’t really know what they were expecting, especially Sánchez, who was smiling as if he was going to a massage interview on Televisión Española. When they arrived in a town covered in mud, the inhabitants of which, in addition to all the pain and losses they have suffered, had been abandoned for days, the rage exploded. “All together as in Fuenteovejuna,” the people began to insult the retinue and throw stones and mud at them. Pedro Sánchez fled surrounded by his escorts, visibly affected, as if he could not believe what was happening; the king and queen, on the other hand, had the courage and decency to show their faces and listen to the people of Paiporta. Mazón also stayed. “All these policemen who are with you today should have been here days ago to clean up the mud,” said some neighbours to Queen Letizia. Common sense is lacking in the Spanish political class.
The lack of common sense and decency is compensated for by an incomparable ability to manipulate reality and invent a story. The government and the like-minded media explained that what happened in Paiporta was not due to popular indignation, but to the presence of far Right and neo-Nazi groups. The government has no shame and treats us like idiots. The tragedy in Valencia is a painful reminder of the consequences of being in the hands of dishonourable men, of a political caste that is only concerned with maintaining its privileges and does not know the sense of responsibility. In Spain, we say as a joke that resign is a Russian name (dimitir, resign in Spanish, is very similar to the name Dimitri), because nobody resigns despite being involved in the worst scandals. However, sometimes the damage caused is so serious that it is not enough to leave politics and even less to end up as a manager in a big company. No, politicians have to take responsibility, like the rest of us, for the consequences of their actions. And so should all those who, out of ideological fanaticism, vote for the worst. We have to change this, otherwise the alternative will be Fuente Ovejuna.
Catastrophe Under the Worst Leadership
A volunteer walks on a muddy street as he leaves Paiporta, in the region of Valencia, eastern Spain, on November 3, 2024, in the aftermath of devastating deadly floods. The death toll from Spain’s worst floods in a generation has climbed to 217, rescuers said today. (Photo by Jose Jordan/ AFP)
The “Cantar de Mio Cid” is a poem in medieval Castilian composed around 1200. It recounts the heroic exploits of the Castilian knight Don Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, better known as El Cid Campeador, in the twilight years of his life. The poem is a story about honour; El Cid is banished after being unjustly accused of robbery but wins a royal pardon after taking Valencia from the Almoravid invaders, Muslim fanatics who had launched a jihad from North Africa. There is a very popular phrase from the Cantar that for many people sums up the story of the Cid: “What a good vassal if he had a good lord.” This phrase has regained all its meaning with the events of recent days in Valencia.
Faced with the ineffectiveness of the central and regional governments, thousands of volunteers organised themselves in order to do what the state was not doing: help the victims of the floods caused by the DANA weather system, a “cold drop” that hit the province of Valencia on October 29th. The Catholic Church, NGOs and youth organisations, such as Revuelta, organised the collection of food and donations. Thousands of people mobilized to bring aid to the affected populations, who had been completely helpless and abandoned to their fate. Like the Cid, the Spaniards still have honour left. The vassal proved to be far superior to his ‘lord’ in a catastrophe that has affected half a million people, 325,000 of whom, according to the European satellite system Copernicus, are at ground zero of the disaster. The numbers speak for themselves: more than 200 people have already died; more than a thousand are reported missing; 100,000 cars have been reported as total losses; 77,000 homes have been affected; 18,000 businesses have been destroyed. The material damage is incalculable.
But where was the state? It all started on the wrong foot. The rain warning that the AEMET (Spanish Meteorological Agency) issued at 7:30 on Tuesday was already too late. Barely five hours after the warning, the president of the Autonomous Community of Valencia, Carlos Mazón of the Partido Popular (PP), gave a press conference to announce that the storm would diminish in intensity after 6 p.m. because it would “move to the province of Cuenca.” The opposite happened, and an hour later, the DANA had already caused hurricane-force winds, rising rivers, and overflowing ravines.
This tragedy was compounded by the government’s response. Instead of immediate cooperation between central and regional governments to help the hundreds of thousands of affected Spaniards, instead of doing what a real ruler should do, a political game was played to determine who had the competence to intervene. The government claimed that it needed the permission of the autonomous community to send the army to Valencia. Pedro Sánchez cynically put it days later: “If they need more resources, let them ask for them.”
It is beyond immoral to discuss competence issues during a catastrophe, but in Spain we live in a dystopia governed by functionaries, the dumbest and the most evil of the class. As usual, Pedro Sánchez’s government lied. It can declare a state of emergency without the permission of the autonomous community and deploy the army, with or without a state of emergency. The first paragraph of article 4 of Organic Law 4/1981 of 1 June allows the government to declare a state of alarm in “catastrophes, calamities or public misfortunes, such as earthquakes, floods, urban and forest fires or accidents of great magnitude.” The national emergency, which is foreseen for emergencies of national interest and can only be decreed by the ministry of the interior, could have also been used.
The military, the fire brigade, the police, and the Guardia Civil asked to be sent to Valencia in vain; some even volunteered, but they were rejected. The Ministry of the Interior did not start sending reinforcements until November 2nd. As for the army, the UME (Unidad Militar de Emergencias, Military Emergency Unit) was sent from the start, although the minister of defence, Margarita Robles, blamed the Valencian government for the slow military deployment. On the first of November, it was announced that more units would be sent in three days’ time. When Spain sent military aid to Morocco after the 2023 earthquake, the same minister said: “We will send whatever is necessary, because everyone knows that the first hours, especially when there are people under the rubble, are crucial.”
Other countries have also offered help. The French interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, contacted his Spanish counterpart, Fernando Grande Marlaska, to send a support team of 250 firefighters, but was told it was not necessary. However, French volunteer firefighters have arrived, such as the team from the French Disaster Relief Group (GSCF), which arrived in the town of Alfafar on Friday. A video shows their arrival and the disbelief of the French firefighters when they discovered that they were the first emergency team to arrive in the town, one of the worst affected. Other offers of help, many of which have yet to be responded to, have come from Argentina, Portugal, Italy, and Poland, among others.
Malgorzata Wolczyk, a Polish journalist who knows Spain very well, confessed to me her confusion at how events have unfolded. She compared what happened in Valencia with the severe floods that affected Central Europe, including Poland, in September. The human and material losses were much less because of the immediate arrival of the “civilian army,” created by the previous Law and Justice (PiS) government, trained for special tasks and for combating natural disasters. Unlike Spanish volunteers who arrive by their own means, the Polish were sent to the disaster area in special trains. Even the prime minister, Donald Tusk, arrived immediately at the site of the flooding. For Wolczy, it is incomprehensible that “a country that is so rich and better organised in many areas than we are, should leave its affected citizens without help.”
Of course, Sánchez was not the only politician to turn the catastrophe into a political game. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who offered EU assistance, said that what happened “is the dramatic reality of climate change.” The dramatic reality von der Leyen is talking about is something that predates the climate fanaticism movement to which the European president belongs. The first known floods in the city of Valencia occurred in 1321 and 1328. One of the worst floods took place on 27 September 1517, between the festivities to celebrate the arrival of the new king and future Emperor Charles V. In October 1957 there was another cold drop, which left more than 300 dead. This disaster led General Franco’s government to draw up what is known as Plan Sur, which stipulated the construction of the new Turia riverbed between 1958 and 1973, which has protected Valencia on this and other occasions.
We also have an example of terrible floods in which the state’s response was totally different. It was in Bilbao in 1983, also under a Socialist government. The flood caused 35 deaths, but the response was immediate, and the action of volunteers and the deployment of thousands of army troops prevented greater harm.
I began by talking about the Cantar del Mio Cid to distinguish the Spaniards with honour from those without it. I am going to finish with a play, “Fuenteovejuna,” written by Lope de Vega between 1612 and 1614. The play recounts the events of the night of 23-24 April 1476, when the residents of Fuente Ovejuna took up arms against the Commander Major of the Order of Calatrava, Fernán Gómez de Guzmán, and stoned him to death for all the damage the nobleman had done to the town. When the judges looked for the culprit, the only answer they got was: “Fuente Ovejuna did it.” From this story, popularised by Lope de Vega, a saying was born: “Todos a una como en Fuenteovejuna” (All together as in Fuenteovejuna), a lesson of what happens when a whole town unites to defend its interests or face injustice.
On Sunday, November 3rd, five days after the tragedy, the king and queen of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, and Carlos Mazón went to the town of Paiporta. I don’t really know what they were expecting, especially Sánchez, who was smiling as if he was going to a massage interview on Televisión Española. When they arrived in a town covered in mud, the inhabitants of which, in addition to all the pain and losses they have suffered, had been abandoned for days, the rage exploded. “All together as in Fuenteovejuna,” the people began to insult the retinue and throw stones and mud at them. Pedro Sánchez fled surrounded by his escorts, visibly affected, as if he could not believe what was happening; the king and queen, on the other hand, had the courage and decency to show their faces and listen to the people of Paiporta. Mazón also stayed. “All these policemen who are with you today should have been here days ago to clean up the mud,” said some neighbours to Queen Letizia. Common sense is lacking in the Spanish political class.
The lack of common sense and decency is compensated for by an incomparable ability to manipulate reality and invent a story. The government and the like-minded media explained that what happened in Paiporta was not due to popular indignation, but to the presence of far Right and neo-Nazi groups. The government has no shame and treats us like idiots. The tragedy in Valencia is a painful reminder of the consequences of being in the hands of dishonourable men, of a political caste that is only concerned with maintaining its privileges and does not know the sense of responsibility. In Spain, we say as a joke that resign is a Russian name (dimitir, resign in Spanish, is very similar to the name Dimitri), because nobody resigns despite being involved in the worst scandals. However, sometimes the damage caused is so serious that it is not enough to leave politics and even less to end up as a manager in a big company. No, politicians have to take responsibility, like the rest of us, for the consequences of their actions. And so should all those who, out of ideological fanaticism, vote for the worst. We have to change this, otherwise the alternative will be Fuente Ovejuna.
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