Debate over delay in deploying reinforcements in Valencia, Spain

Debate over the delay during the Valencia floods

How many lives could have been saved if the army had deployed as a whole from day one? The question, posed by a well-known crime reporter, sums up the unease running through public conversation after the catastrophe. The central government insists that emergency response is a regional matter and that it was waiting for a formal request from the Generalitat (the Valencian regional government). The Generalitat, led by the PP (conservative People's Party), maintains it had already sounded the alarm. In between lies an uncomfortable fact: the UME (Spain's Military Emergency Unit) did not reach Paiporta until the fifth day, according to the testimony of a resident who says he spent three days unable to leave his building's lobby, blocked by twelve stacked cars.

The figure that gives the story its title —90 hours— is no rhetorical exaggeration. It is the time between the National Security alert on Tuesday 29 October at 8 a.m., according to the document released, and the effective deployment of military resources. In that interval, the barranco del Poyo ravage went from 400 to 1,600 cubic metres per second. The mass alert to mobile phones came too late. And thousands of people were trapped in garages, ground floors and vehicles with no one able to confirm whether they were still alive.

Who has the power to mobilise the army?

Article 12 of Spain's Civil Protection Law creates the National Alert Network as a system for communicating warnings to the competent authorities, without prejudice to regional powers. On that basis, part of the analysis holds that the central government could have declared a state of alarm, emergency or siege and deployed all available resources without needing a region to request it. The precedent most often cited is the Bilbao floods of 1983: the PSOE government deployed 13,000 soldiers within 24 hours.

The other line of argument replies that a region has no resources for a catastrophe of this magnitude and that the obligation to ask for help is its own. The argument rests on military logic: a captain paralysed in the middle of battle does not exempt the colonel from acting, but the colonel cannot guess that the captain is paralysed if the latter does not report it. The result, in any case, is the same: five days of delay.

The UME in Paiporta: five days late

The most repeated testimony is that of a Paiporta resident describing how the UME appeared five days later. "We couldn't leave my building's lobby for three days because twelve cars were blocking it, some on top of others. Five days without electricity or water," he recounts. In that context, the question of how many lives could have been saved by an immediate deployment has no official answer, but it does have an uncomfortable logic: a flooded garage may hold pockets of air that allow survival for hours, not days.

Comparisons with other episodes have become commonplace. During the pandemic, the army took to the streets without anyone hearing the regions request it. During the La Palma volcano, the response was also criticised as late. The difference, some argue, is that here there was a National Security warning twelve hours in advance.

The official story and its cracks

The government has convened an extraordinary cabinet meeting to approve a "powerful package" of aid. The opposition reads the move as an attempt to cover up the Koldo case. Vox has announced it will file incivil charges against the prime minister and several members of the executive for alleged reckless homicide and failure to render assistance. The complaint, in any case, is still at the announcement stage and has not been admitted for processing.

Meanwhile, the UME continues combing La Albufera and the beaches in search of victims. The minutes of the crisis meeting put the provisional number of missing at 1,900. The Forata dam held back 37,000 million litres. These are figures that admit no interpretation: the scale of the event overwhelmed any forecast.

Spanish politics at its most predictable

The pattern repeats itself with a fidelity that is already suspicious. Some blame the central government for not intervening. Others blame the head of the Generalitat for not requesting it. Some share responsibility between the two, and others take the chance to settle scores from the previous legislative term. According to a published report, the disinformation industry is exploiting the lack of coordination to sow hatred with populist slogans that resonate among right-wing leaders.

The truth is that Spanish politics has turned a catastrophe with hundreds of deaths into an electoral board game. And that, while people argue over who should have called whom, families are still waiting for news. The full breakdown of response times, hour by hour, yields a difference that surprises even those who trinc the story closely.

In the end, the question is not who was right. It is how many of those who died trapped in a car or under a log would have survived with 90 fewer hours of waiting. No one will ever know. And that, precisely, is what no one wants to answer.