The cold drop and the autonomous regions: they talk about Valencia as if it were Portugal

When the Spanish autonomous system was invented, many did not imagine that its defenders would end up proving that it was a bad idea.

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Yesterday, the head of the Military Emergency Unit (UME), Lieutenant General Francisco Javier Marcos, and the general secretary of Land Transport of the Ministry of Transport, Marta Serrano Balbuena, held a press conference at the Palacio de La Moncloa in which they blamed the government of the Valencian Community for the late intervention of the Army, a version that the media close to the government have widely disseminated in an attempt to free the Sánchez government from responsibility for its poor management.

Yesterday, Televisión Española, which has already become the government's propaganda machine thanks to an assault committed last Wednesday in the midst of a catastrophe, reported on this press conference with the following headline: "The UME defends that they intervened "when the Valencian Government gave the green light": "We couldn't enter without authorization"." According to TVE, the head of the UME said: "I can have a thousand soldiers at the emergency door, but I can't legally enter until the emergency director authorizes me."

I can't believe my eyes. Let me see if I understand this correctly: we've had a catastrophe that has affected several towns, which has already left more than 200 dead, which has left thousands of residents of the Valencian Community without electricity and running water for days, which has destroyed roads and interrupted railway traffic, and according to the head of the UME he can't do anything if a regional president doesn't give him permission to act? What kind of joke is this?

That is to say, any citizen can be accused of the crime of failure to provide assistance if they do not act in a life-or-death situation, for example in the event of a serious accident, (Article 195 of the Penal Code that I commented on here last Saturday), and the UME has to sit and wait for a regional president to tell them that they can do their duty in a part of Spain? And if the regional president does not give his permission, what is the UME supposed to do, wait or simply return to its barracks?

Much of our political class has been telling us for many years about the benefits of the autonomous system, about the supposed advantages of having turned Spain into 17 small states, each with its army of civil servants and its own legislation. They have tried to convince us how good it was that Spaniards were no longer equal before the law, that our rights were subordinated to the autonomous community in which we live and that our freedoms were subject to all kinds of legal and linguistic barriers.

Finally, when a catastrophe occurs, the autonomous system serves as a way for politicians to put their powers above the common good, to refuse to act purely on political calculations, to hand over their responsibility to others and to play with citizens as if we were pawns on a chessboard.

After yesterday's press conference, both the government and the autonomous state have been completely destroyed, to a level that might have seemed unthinkable a few weeks ago and which justifies the only party, Vox, that today dares to criticise this system. The government has used the autonomous state to avoid its responsibility and refuse to act in the face of a major catastrophe, as if the lives of hundreds of people mattered less than the personal and partisan interests of Sánchez and the PSOE.

We have reached the shameful spectacle of speaking of Valencia as if it were Portugal or Andorra, as if the Army had to ask permission from a foreign government to go and save lives in the city of Turia, as if there were an international border halfway between Valencia and Madrid. After what has happened, it is no longer enough for the Sánchez government to resign and call for new general elections, with which we Spaniards can turn the page on this infamous chapter in our democratic history. In addition, it is increasingly urgent to put an end to this ruinous autonomous system, a disaster that has already destroyed lives and will continue to destroy them if we do nothing to put an end to this complete absurdity.

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Photo: Efe.