Spain's five ignored warnings: from Covid to the blackout and Ceuta

Five ignored warnings: from Elbichito to the blackout and Adamuz

How many warnings have to pile up before someone takes responsibility? The list circulating these days —Elbichito, the Valencia floods, the blackout, the Adamuz rail crash and Ceuta— mixes documented facts with suspicions that no one has yet brought before a court. In all five cases, those spreading the list claim, there was an advance warning and, in all five, the response came after the damage was done.

Elbichito, face masks and a health system on the brink

The mandatory wearing of face masks even outdoors remains the favourite example of those who argue that health decisions responded to interests unrelated to epidemiological evidence. That reading is thrown out without proof and should be treated for what it is: a political hypothesis, not a finding. The verifiable point, according to the publications cited, is another one: the public health system is collapsing, and some claim that certain protest calls over its state are being driven by the very parties that run the system.

The blackout prevention plan and the energy zero

An ABC headline sums up the paradox: the government is shelving the plan to prevent blackouts despite Brussels' approval. Then came the energy zero in Lanzarote and La Graciosa, which left the islands without power and hit the water supply: several desalination plants went down and only Playa Blanca kept its service. To that is added a less visible and more costly drip: industrial shutdowns, which, according to one participant, already add up to several episodes.

904 dams and the risk still on the table

Spain has 904 dams classified as posing a "serious potential risk" to the population in the event of a breach, and the known diagnosis is that action is urgently needed. It is the kind of warning that makes no headlines until something irreparable happens, and it explains why the list of disasters always seems to have been written in hindsight.

Adamuz, Ceuta and the leap to grave accusation

In the Adamuz rail crash, the accusation going around is that Adif (Spain's railway infrastructure manager) has not explained the disappearance of 42 metres of track. There is talk of destruction or disappearance of evidence, always as a suspicion with no judicial backing. Ceuta adds another front: housing migrants next to Army explosives bunkers, and the immediate leap to talk of high treason and a negotiated handover of Ceuta and Melilla. That last claim is a very serious accusation made without a shred of evidence, and it should be read as such.

Inheritance as an alibi

The strongest counterargument does not come from the government, one participant argues: every administration inherits corpses. The ICO loans from the 1982 Tous dam disaster were still being closed out decades later; Mariano Rajoy still had the Lorca earthquake victims waiting for him; and five years after the volcano, dozens of those affected on La Palma are still living in container homes. Sánchez is neither better nor worse, that same participant concludes: the persecution, he says, will be a subject of study.

In the end, the interesting question is not how many warnings were ignored, but how many of those still to come are already on the table.