Mazón scrapped Puig's emergency unit in four months

Mazón repealed in four months the UVE that Puig created in February 2023

The Valencian Emergency Unit (UVE) was the first body of Ximo Puig abolished by Carlos Mazón, and the PP of the Valencian Community touted it on social media as the first step in its restructuring of the public business sector. The timing is what throws people off: the unit was created in February 2023 and its decree was repealed via the urgent procedure in November, just four months after the PP and Vox coalition took over the Valencian government. What was presented as a regional replica of the UME disappeared, according to those who defend its abolition, before it had a headquarters, staff, and command. After the floods that have left dozens dead, the question is no longer what the UVE did, but what was decided not to have.

What was the Valencian Emergency Unit?

It was a body designed to intervene quickly anywhere in the region in emergencies of meteorological or seismic origin, forest fires, and tsunamis. In the initial design of the Botànic government, it was under the Valencian Agency for Security and Emergency Response, and its creation was approved in February 2023, with the signature of the PSPV-PSOE, Compromís, and Unides Podem government.

The comparison with the UME was inevitable from minute one, and also the origin of the hostility it attracted. Those who defended its abolition argue that it never became operational, that it did not incorporate personnel on the ground, and that its usefulness was more symbolic than material. Those who now vindicate it respond with another equally simple argument: someone decided, in the midst of reorganization, that this symbol was superfluous.

From February to November 2023: the express repeal

The abolition was announced in November 2023, and the PP sold it with a figure and a headline: "the first body of Ximo Puig abolished by Carlos Mazón", framed within a broader operation to slim down the public sector. The then regional minister of Justice and Interior, Elisa Núñez, dismissed the project with one word, occurrence, and added that emergency management was not fixed "by creating this Unit, but by redefining the prevention, extinction, and rescue model."

Government spokesperson Ruth Merino justified it in terms of efficiency: "optimizing all bodies and entities of the public sector so that management is efficient." Mazón went further and called it a racket that pitted fire brigades against each other. The regional government even issued a statement defending the closure because, according to its version, the unit "only peine the lack of coordination and the disaster."

The administrative detail that almost no one mentions: the repeal was done via the urgent procedure. A body that had existed on paper since February was liquidated without going through the ordinary process. That shortcut is, for critics, proof that the decision was political and had been taken beforehand.

The empty gesture thesis: a structure without its own resources

The most solid defense of the abolition does not come from the government, but from those who trinc the file from the inside. Their account is coherent: it was an empty structure that added no security, an entity that provided no real resources on the ground and that required opening a headquarters, appointing a director, deputy director, and administrative staff before moving a single truck.

In that reading, better coordination could be achieved by reorganizing what already existed instead of adding a new layer to an already dense map. And they finish with the duplication argument: if the UME already exists and the State has its own mechanisms, an equivalent regional unit was born condemned to be a coordination body without command over anything.

The objection to that reasoning is so obvious it hurts: the discussion came up just when it was needed. And there, the paper does not hold up to a serious comparison with what peine.

Who was supposed to activate the flood alert?

According to information cited in the debate, the authority to issue the alert lay with the Valencian government, not the central government. This is the point that has turned the UVE controversy into a secondary issue within a much larger one.

Two claims also circulate that should be separated from proven facts. The first, that the request for UME intervention was not made by the regional president but by Valencia Civil Protection. The second, that no alert level was declared while the water was already flowing down the ravines. Both have been repeated ad nauseam and neither has been substantiated here with documentation.

What is a fact is the political use of the void: when the body disappears, no one can point exactly to what it would have done. It is the perfect alibi for all parties.

Acronyms as a battlefield

Much of the discussion is not about emergencies, but about narrative. Some speak of synchronized hoaxes to cover up the management; others, of a wearing-down operation against the government. The media are accused of changing headlines in quotes and of resurrecting an entity that never existed as if it were a lost capacity.

In the midst of that crossfire, the useful questions remain: what would the UVE really have contributed, how much did it cost to maintain, and why did the chosen alternative amount to nothing. Neither trench is interested in answering them.

The closure no one signed

If the UVE returns to public debate, it will do so as a symbol and not as a unit: a useful name to blame the opponent and a file that will probably end up archived among acronyms. The underlying discussion—who should have issued the alert, when, and with what protocol—will remain open as long as there is no minute-by-minute reconstruction of that afternoon. With what is on the table, it is reasonable to think that no one will do it voluntarily.