OVER 100,000 people marched in Valencia at the weekend demanding the resignation of regional president Carlos Mazon in the wake of catastrophic floods that left hundreds dead.
Mr Mazon, of the right-wing People’s Party (PP), is accused of delaying flood alerts and emergency responses in the interest of businesses which didn’t want to close early.
Marchers carried placards reading “Mazon Resign!” and “You Killed Us!” Outside the city hall where the march began, riot police beat back some protesters deemed too close with truncheons.
The march wound to the seat of the regional government, which was pelted with mud, as were Spain’s king, Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Mr Mazon when they visited the city last weekend.
Spain’s weather agency had issued a red alert warning for the region at 7.30am on October 29, but the regional government, which has the ability to alert residents by text message, did not send warnings out in this way till after 8pm, more than 12 hours later and over two hours after the floods began.
Thousands of volunteers were the first responders and providers of humanitarian relief in many areas, with the deployment of police reinforcements and soldiers taking days. The delayed public warnings and sluggish response is blamed for the huge death toll, currently at 220 with over 90 people still missing.
The demonstration followed a symbolic 10-minute strike on Friday at noon, called by three major Spanish trade union organisations, the CCOO — the largest and with its roots in the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) and grassroots Catholic worker organisations — the Socialist Party-aligned UGT and the Catholic USO.
The PCE, a coalition partner in the national government, denounced the “reactionary, pro-employer and [climate] denialist PP government of Valencia as politically responsible for its negligent, incompetent and criminal management — for not announcing the alarm that the [meteorological agency] had been announcing for days… for refusing to provide resources after the catastrophe… for putting the lives of the working population at risk.”
It also attacked businesses which it said had tried to maintain economic activity despite the danger, then abandoned their staffs “to their fate in the middle of the storm.”
Mr Mazon said he respected the march but holding officials accountable should wait until after the clean-up. Many marchers denounced the central government as well as the regional, saying it should have taken charge, while others took aim at the king.
“The king should have made them send in [the army]. Why do we want him as a symbolic figure? He is worthless — the people are alone,” marcher Sara Sanchez told reporters.
