Jucar River Authority Insured Staff for Negligence Before DANA

Negligence Insurance Three Weeks Before the Flood

Can negligence be insured? Yes, and the Jucar River Authority (state agency) did so. The body formalized on October 7 a civil liability insurance policy derived from incivil proceedings for 212 public employees, according to the notice published in the BOE. Twenty-two days later, the DANA devastated parts of the province of Valencia. The text under discussion does not, according to its defenders, refer to ordinary professional liability: it explicitly speaks of negligence.

The publication in the BOE sparked controversy. Some readers saw it as preventive coverage for what was to come; others argued that any architect, doctor, or driver carries a similar policy. Both can be true at once, and that is exactly where the problem lies.

What the Contract Published in the BOE Says

The document covers the hiring of a civil liability insurance policy derived from incivil proceedings for the agency's staff. This is not incivil liability insurance: such a thing does not exist in the market. It is a policy that covers the civil compensation resulting from a incivil conviction, just as a car insurance policy pays the victim of a hit-and-run even if the driver is convicted.

The debate gets tangled right there. It is argued that the text refers to minor negligence, and the policy's defenders add that serious negligence would not be insurable because it carries a prison sentence. This nuance has its logic, but it also admits an uncomfortable reading: the policy would cover the range of liability from administrative carelessness to irreversible errors.

Is This a Normal Policy or Is Something Anomalous About It?

The most repeated argument in favor of its normality is professional comparison. An architect signs with their civil liability insurance; a surgeon does too. A civil servant processing dam permits is no different in theory. The objection arises when the concrete example is presented: it is not the same to leave a screw inside a patient as to make a mistake managing infrastructure with thousands of people downstream.

Here lies the crux of the matter. The thread asks whether it is legal to pay with public funds for the civil liability of a public employee in a incivil matter. The reasonable doubt no one has clarified is whether this coverage is a practice widespread across all river basin authorities or if it was contracted here with unusual haste.

Renewal or New Contract: The Date That Changes the Narrative

One of the most cited data points to lower the alarm is that the policy had existed since 2020, with terms identical to the current ones. If it is a periodic renewal, the contract loses the charge of intentionality attributed to it. But some argue that the notice itself speaks of contracting, not extending, and others point to an overlap between the old and new contracts: the tragedy would have caught the agency with two active policies simultaneously.

If this reading is true, the focus shifts. The question is no longer why it was signed in October, but why it was not renewed earlier, or why the insurer changed, or what the previous tender specified. The fine details of this chronology — start dates, expiry dates, premium amounts — are not settled, and one should not take them as established facts.

Forata, Barranco del Poyo, and the Flows Circulating

The numbers being discussed are the most uncomfortable. The Forata reservoir received an inflow of 2,000 m³/s and discharged around 900 m³/s, according to messages disseminated by the Jucar River Authority on the night of the 30th. The Barranco del Poyo, at 6:00 p.m. on the 29th, transported 1,725 m³/s, almost four times the flow of the Ebro River, as noted in the thread.

Precision matters and should be repeated: Forata drains into the Magro River, which flooded Catadau, Alfarp, Carlet, La Alcudia, Guadassuar, and Algemesí. It is about 30 kilometers from where most of the victims occurred. Attributing the catastrophe to the opening of gates is, with the data on the table, a simplification that does not hold up to hydrological detail.

The Alert, the Budget, and the Rest of the Narrative

Warnings to the population did not reach mobile phones until 8:00 p.m., according to the debate, when many of those affected already had water on the ground floor. The circulating reconstruction places the decision in the political, not technical, realm, and points out that information on the Poyo flow was on the table hours earlier. These are claims that cross accusations and denials and, to this day, remain unsettled.

The other disconcerting figure is budgetary: 96,000 euros spread over four years to maintain 30 kilometers of hydrological channel, according to a figure circulating in the thread. With this amount, the cost of drafting the tender specifications eats a notable part of the total. And that, apart from insurance and alerts, says quite a bit about how the maintenance of channels has been historically treated.

In the end, the policy is the least of it. The insurance covers minor negligence because serious negligence is uninsurable, and no insurance company owner goes to jail for anyone. What is striking is that someone considered it necessary to contract this coverage and that, twenty-two days later, it was needed.