The UME does not belong to the PSOE: it belongs to all Spaniards and is at their service

Spain has a government besieged by corruption scandals and that seems determined to sink a little lower with each passing day.

A400M, C295, and CH-47 aircraft fighting fires: Spain's pending challenges
The PSOE's curious shift in discourse on the fire and its silence on the arsonists

This morning, the socialist Óscar Puente, Minister of Transport and politically responsible for the Adamuz accident (with 46 dead and for which he has still not resigned six months later) has launched into using the Armed Forces politically amidst the wave of fires affecting several regions, including particularly serious fires in Castilla-La Mancha and the Community of Madrid. Puente wrote this message on his Twitter account this morning:

"We all know that the UME is now the new fire service for the autonomous communities governed by the PP. They cut taxes for the rich, slash public services, and then ask the government to solve their problems."

It is intolerable that a minister speaks this way about the Military Emergency Unit (UME), a unit that does not belong to the government, but to all Spaniards —it is part of the Armed Forces—and that is at the service of all Spaniards, not just those in the regions governed by the PSOE. Furthermore, the Community of Madrid is, by far, the Spanish region that contributes the most money to the State, money that allows the UME not only to respond to emergencies in that region, but also in other Spanish regions (I am writing this from Galicia, by the way).

As if the despicable messages from Óscar Puente trying to gain political advantage from public media paid for by all Spaniards, as if only he and the members of his party had paid for them, weren't enough, today at 2:10 p.m. the Prime Minister's Office published this message on its official Twitter channel, @desdelamoncloa:

The message states: "These are the resources of the Spanish Government deployed today to the fires in the Community of Madrid and the province of Ávila." Curiously, the message omits one of the sites where the UME is deployed. Just yesterday this military unit identified those sites, without omissions:

As we can see, the UME first mentions the La Mierla forest fire in Guadalajara, which is in Castilla-La Mancha, a region governed by the PSOE. Did La Moncloa decide to omit the UME's deployment in that region so as not to undermine Óscar Puente's despicable message? It is outrageous that official information is being disseminated with such political bias, serving the PSOE's crude attempt to politically exploit forest fires that also affect a region governed by the socialists.

Furthermore, it must be remembered that the UME (Military Emergency Unit) and the other units of the Armed Forces do not belong to the government, but to Spain. They are part of the State's resources, paid for by all Spaniards. Article 97 of the Spanish Constitution assigns the government the management of these resources, but not their ownership. The socialists have been colonizing all institutions in Spain, placing their cronies in charge, in some cases with very generous public salaries paid for by everyone. Now, they also intend to treat the Armed Forces as if they were the property of the government and, moreover, of the PSOE, a party that treats the State as if it were its private estate.

Ya va siendo hora de terminar con esa visión sectaria de los recursos públicos, promovida, además, por un gobierno que está batiendo históricas marcas de recaudación (nunca antes el Estado había ingresado tanto dinero) al mismo tiempo que los españoles sufren un deterioro cada vez mayor de los medios administrados por el Estado, como podemos ver en el caos ferroviario, en el deficitario mantenimiento de las carreteras y en los problemas de suministro eléctrico, que ya han interrumpido tres veces la actividad de la gran industria en lo que llevamos de año. Tenemos aal gobierno que más dinero nos quita a los españoles y el más incompetente a la hora de gestionarlo. ¿A dónde ha ido a parar todo ese dinero que debería servir para mantener nuestros servicios públicos en buenas condiciones? Ésa es la pregunta que el gobierno, incluido el ministro Óscar Puente, debe responder.

It is high time to put an end to this sectarian view of public resources, promoted, moreover, by a government that is breaking historic tax collection records (never before has the State collected so much money) at the same time that Spaniards suffer an ever-increasing deterioration of the resources managed by the State, as we can see in the railway chaos, the deficient maintenance of the roads and the problems of electricity supply: the power grid has already interrupted the activity of large industries three times this year. We have the government that takes the most money from Spaniards and is the most incompetent when it comes to managing it. Where has all that money gone that should be used to maintain our public services in good condition? That is the question the government, including Minister Óscar Puente, must answer.