Flood in Valencia. The head of the region refused to resign, despite protests

The head of the Spanish region of Valencia Carlos Mason has refused to resign, despite the protests that have shaken the region due to large-scale flooding.

The Guardian writes about it.

At the end of October, heavy rains hit Valencia, killing 224 people. Streams of muddy water swept away everything in their path: cars floated at high speed along with trees. The water rose up to three meters.

Carlos Mason faced calls to resign over his response to the flooding. Spainʼs meteorological agency had been issuing storm warnings for the region since October 25, but authorities in Valencia did not send alerts to local phones until the flooding had already lasted several hours.

On the day of the flood, October 29, he arrived at the emergency coordination center just after 7:00 p.m. because he was having lunch with a journalist.

Speaking in the regional parliament, Mason expressed his condolences to the families of the dead and missing. He vowed to "learn the lesson" and proposed a parliamentary commission of inquiry to determine what went wrong.

"You canʼt learn from the past without knowing what actually happened. We need to find out why the protocols were not sufficient to avoid or mitigate the damage we suffered," Mason said.

Masson reiterated that Spainʼs Socialist-led government bears significant responsibility for the delay in responding to the crisis: "Too many things have gone wrong, the whole system has failed." It is important to note that in Spain regional authorities are responsible for responding to natural disasters. To overcome them, additional resources can be requested from the central government in Madrid.

At the same time, he emphasized that he will not try to evade responsibility when the facts become known.

Mason admitted that aid had taken too long to reach some areas of Valencia. And he called it a mistake to remove the video where he claimed that the rains would stop by 6:00 p.m. on the day the flood began.

"I will not shirk responsibility... There will be self-criticism. There were things we didnʼt do very well," said the Valencia leader.

He explained that he did not arrive at the coordination center immediately because of traffic jams, but did not comment on his long lunch with the journalist.

The leader of the Valencia branch of the Socialist Party Diana Morant called Masonʼs words "an act of political cowardice." She called on the Peopleʼs Party to fire him and call early regional elections next year after the regionʼs recovery.

Dozens of protesters gathered outside the regional parliament during Masonʼs speech, calling him a "liar" and demanding his resignation.

• This flood is the largest in Europe since 1967 and with the highest number of victims in the modern history of Spain. Valencia was covered by heavy rains on October 29.
• As early as November 10, more than 130 000 people protested in Valencia, Spain, over the authoritiesʼ response to massive flooding that killed nearly 200 people. Protesters chanted: "We are soiled with mud, you are soiled with blood," saying local authorities had warned too late about the flooding.

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