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The Rambla deL Poyo PPPPYour browser does not support the element.is once again the innocuous little stream it normally is. Yet in a matter of hours on October 29th it and two other nearby rivers turned into raging torrents, just south of Valencia, Spain’s third city. Muddy water came to chest level. Many of the 219 people so far known to have died, with at least another 89 still missing, were trapped in ground floors or basements, or trying to take their cars out of underground car parks.It was “the greatest natural disaster in our recent history,” declared Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s Socialist prime minister. It has left behind anger as well as grief in Valencia, and searching questions about not just the country’s ability to adapt to climate change but also whether polarised politics in a decentralised state are impeding an effective response to emergencies.In the disaster area, there are more immediate concerns. The small, once-prosperous towns of Paiporta and Picanya, which bore the brunt of the destruction, resemble a war zone. Four bridges over the Rambla del Poyo were swept away. The tracks of the railway to Valencia were lifted off their bridge and left hanging in mid-air. These towns are still full of smashed cars, useless fridges, the remains of furniture and endless mud. Hundreds of volunteers, many young, armed with shovels and brooms, throng the streets. With bulldozers and the army now at work, order is starting to emerge from what is still chaos.“This was murder,” insisted Ricardo Sanchis, a lorry driver in Paiporta. He survived because he lives on the fourth floor. But he lost several friends and two cars. He blames the lack of warning and the lack of a swifter response for some of the deaths. Widespread anger greeted King Felipe and Queen Letizia when they visited Paiporta on November 3rd. More than at the royal couple, who bravely tried to comfort residents, most of it was directed at Mr Sánchez and Carlos Mazón, the conservative head of Valencia’s regional government. Valencia is accustomed to autumnal storms when a cold front hits warm Mediterranean air. But the almost unprecedented magnitude of this one is likely to be a consequence of climate change, with the Mediterranean 2°C warmer than it was on average between 1980 and 2000. In some places a year’s rain fell in hours.Mr Mazón’s inexperienced administration was slow to alert citizens to the risk. Perhaps with its mind on the economic impact of ordering people to stay at home, it waited hours before acting on the national weather agency’s warning of extreme rainfall. Worse, for several days in which Paiporta and other towns lacked food, water, power and communications, it failed to organise help. Neither was Mr Sánchez pro-active, saying that it was up to Mr Mazón to ask for what he needed. Some 90,000 vehicles, around 4,500 businesses and 90 schools are reported to have been damaged or destroyed. The total cost of repairing the damage will be €31.4bn ($33.7bn) according to an initial estimate.Years of partisan political warfare between Mr Sánchez and the opposition People’s Party () have exposed flaws in the Spanish state. Regional governments have acquired ever more power in what has become a kind of bastard federal system. This needs co-ordination and co-operation between different levels of government, but that doesn’t happen, says Juan Romero, a geographer at the University of Valencia. “We have a serious problem of democratic governance in Spain,” he adds.The national and Valencia governments eventually set up joint committees to work on the disaster. But Mr Mazón and Mr Sánchez have announced rival aid plans. The ’s national leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, called on the prime minister to declare a state of emergency, which would place responsibility for the relief effort in the hands of the national government rather than the hapless Mr Mazón. But perhaps because the Constitutional Tribunal, at the behest of Vox, a hard-right party, struck that measure down when he imposed it during the covid pandemic, Mr Sánchez has refused to do so.Mr Mazón scrapped his predecessor’s plan to set up a regional agency for handling emergencies. But preparing the country for climate change also requires co-ordination between different levels of government. Scientists say Spain, and especially its Mediterranean coast, face more frequent heat waves, droughts and rainstorms. More than 2.7m Spaniards live on floodplains, the result of disorderly building in the past, according to Jorge Olcina, a geographer at the University of Alicante. Only since 2015 have urban plans been required to take natural risks into account. After a deadly flood in 1957, Francisco Franco’s dictatorship diverted the River Turia away from the centre of Valencia to a new, broad canalised course farther south. That left the city unscathed this time. Doing the same for the Rambla del Poyo would require national resources.By continuing to bicker over what they call the “narrative” of what is a national tragedy, the mainstream politicians are playing a dangerous game. “Spain has to cool its political climate. Party confrontation is insufferable in these circumstances,” says Paco Cerdà, a writer who worked for Valencia’s previous Socialist president. There is much anger in Valencia against both the governing parties. The hard right, active in the disaster zone, is poised to benefit, unless the political leaders work together far more effectively in what will be a long job of reconstruction.
