'Riadas', a documentary to remind us of what some want us to forget

This week marks one year since the terrible floods that affected several Spanish regions, especially the Valencian Community.

One year after the disaster in Valencia, what has Sánchez done to prevent it from happening again?
The trouble of almost all parties due to the poor management of the cold drop in Spain

On September 15th, in Valencia, the documentary "Riadas" (Floods) was presented. Directed by José Luis Rancaño and Raúl Cerezo and produced by La Dalia Films, it features interviews with those affected by the floods, discussing the terrible events they experienced and commenting on the deplorable response of public administrations and the abysmal coverage by most media outlets, with exceptions such as Iker Jiménez's program "Horizonte," which gave an excellent report on the events on October 31st with a live connection from the ground zero of the catastrophe, showing images of neighbors asking for help from their balconies because the floods had left entire neighborhoods without electricity and running water.

"Riadas" is an unfiltered look at the reality of what happened in the Valencian Community, a terrible event that was not solely due to a meteorological phenomenon, but to political shortcomings in the construction of water infrastructure (let us remember that a month before the catastrophe, the Júcar River Basin Authority (CHJ), a government agency, refused to build stormwater tanks on the Elche-Santa Pola road). These are works that would have mitigated the effects of the floods, saving many lives. It is surprising that to this day no political or judicial process has been initiated to determine responsibility for this.

One year later, this lack of foresight continues: despite what happened and the magnitude of that disaster, Pedro Sánchez's government has still not carried out any flood prevention works and does not plan to start any until at least 2027, that is, when it is time to call general elections that -according to the polls- it will surely lose. The political management of the floods was a disaster involving almost all parties, starting with the Sánchez government, which took four days to deploy a large military force and refused to assume command, a negligence that should be judged as a clear crime of omission of the duty to provide assistance for which, surprisingly, no one is being tried.

Let's add to that the fact that the government deceived those affected by the floods by saying that it had already requested aid from the European Solidarity Fund on November 5th, in order to carry out the reconstruction tasks: two and a half months later it still had not requested that aid. Finally, after the media scandal this caused, the government ended up requesting the aid one day before the deadline for applications, yet another demonstration of its lack of urgency in helping those affected. A year later, many people who lost their homes, businesses, and vehicles are still waiting for that aid, which has not yet arrived and is being hampered by bureaucratic processes like those that torpedoed some of the aid provided by the public in the days following the disaster.

A documentary like "Floods" is essential so that we don't forget all of this, so that the narrative the government is trying to construct to evade responsibility for what happened isn't able to bury the facts, to remember, in short, what some want us to forget about a tragedy that resulted in hundreds of deaths. It's an excellent documentary that I highly recommend. It's currently available on Prime Video, Amazon's platform. Here's the official trailer (the video is in Spanish; you can activate automatic English subtitles in the bottom bar of the player):

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Photo: An image of Carlet (Valencia) shared by @pasalakua, showing vehicles that were swept away by a flash flood.