{"id":57658,"date":"2024-11-05T07:01:01","date_gmt":"2024-11-05T06:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/?p=57658"},"modified":"2025-11-05T03:34:39","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T02:34:39","slug":"the-cold-drop-and-the-autonomous-regions-they-talk-about-valencia-as-if-it-were-portugal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2024\/11\/05\/the-cold-drop-and-the-autonomous-regions-they-talk-about-valencia-as-if-it-were-portugal\/","title":{"rendered":"The cold drop and the autonomous regions: they talk about Valencia as if it were Portugal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When the Spanish autonomous system was invented, many did not imagine that its defenders would end up proving that it was a bad idea.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><rel><a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2024\/11\/03\/for-the-government-it-was-more-urgent-to-assault-rtve-than-to-send-the-army-to-save-lives\/\">For the government it was more 'urgent' to assault RTVE than to send the Army to save lives<\/a><\/rel><br \/>\n<rel><a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2024\/11\/02\/pedro-sanchez-took-4-days-to-order-a-large-military-deployment-and-justified-it-by-lying\/\">Pedro S\u00e1nchez took 4 days to order a large military deployment and justified it by lying<\/a><\/rel><\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, <strong>the head of the Military Emergency Unit (UME), Lieutenant General Francisco Javier Marcos<\/strong>, and the general secretary of Land Transport of the Ministry of Transport, <strong>Marta Serrano Balbuena<\/strong>, held <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rtve.es\/noticias\/20241104\/ume-defiende-intervinieron-gobierno-valenciano-sin-autorizacion\/16315894.shtml\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a press conference at the Palacio de La Moncloa<\/a> in which <strong>they blamed the government of the Valencian Community for the late intervention of the Army<\/strong>, a version that the media close to the government have widely disseminated in <strong>an attempt to free the S\u00e1nchez government from responsibility for its poor management.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, <strong>Televisi\u00f3n Espa\u00f1ola<\/strong>, which has already become the government's propaganda machine thanks to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2024\/11\/03\/for-the-government-it-was-more-urgent-to-assault-rtve-than-to-send-the-army-to-save-lives\/\">an assault committed last Wednesday in the midst of a catastrophe<\/a>, reported on this press conference with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rtve.es\/noticias\/20241104\/ume-defiende-intervinieron-gobierno-valenciano-sin-autorizacion\/16315894.shtml\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the following headline<\/a>: <em>\"<strong>The UME defends that they intervened \"when the Valencian Government gave the green light\": \"We couldn't enter without authorization\".\"<\/strong><\/em> According to TVE, the head of the UME said: <em>\"I can have a thousand soldiers at the emergency door, but <strong>I can't legally enter until the emergency director authorizes me.<\/strong>\"<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I can't believe my eyes. Let me see if I understand this correctly: <strong>we've had a catastrophe that has affected several towns, which has already left more than 200 dead<\/strong>, 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, <strong>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?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>That is to say, <strong>any citizen can be accused of the crime of failure to provide assistance<\/strong> if they do not act in a life-or-death situation, for example in the event of a serious accident, (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2024\/11\/02\/the-article-195-of-the-penal-code-and-the-govts-delay-in-sending-the-army-to-valencia\/\">Article 195 of the Penal Code that I commented on here<\/a> last Saturday), <strong>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?<\/strong> And if the regional president does not give his permission, what is the UME supposed to do, wait or simply return to its barracks?<\/p>\n<p>Much of our political class has been <strong>telling us for many years about the benefits of the autonomous system<\/strong>, about the supposed advantages of having turned Spain into 17 small states, each with its army of civil servants and its own legislation. <strong>They have tried to convince us how good it was that Spaniards were no longer equal before the law<\/strong>, that our rights were subordinated to the autonomous community in which we live and that our freedoms were subject to <strong>all kinds of legal and linguistic barriers<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, <strong>when a catastrophe occurs, the autonomous system serves as a way for politicians to put their powers above the common good<\/strong>, to refuse to act purely on political calculations, to hand over their responsibility to others and to <strong>play with citizens as if we were pawns on a chessboard<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>After yesterday's press conference, <strong>both the government and the autonomous state have been completely destroyed<\/strong>, 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. <strong>The government has used the autonomous state to avoid its responsibility and refuse to act in the face of a major catastrophe<\/strong>, as if the lives of hundreds of people mattered less than the personal and partisan interests of S\u00e1nchez and the PSOE.<\/p>\n<p>We have reached the shameful spectacle of <strong>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<\/strong>, as if there were an international border halfway between Valencia and Madrid. After what has happened, <strong>it is no longer enough for the S\u00e1nchez government to resign and call for new general elections<\/strong>, with which we Spaniards can turn the page on this infamous chapter in our democratic history. In addition, <strong>it is increasingly urgent to put an end to this ruinous autonomous system, a disaster that has already destroyed lives<\/strong> and will continue to destroy them if we do nothing to put an end to this complete absurdity.<\/p>\n<p>---<\/p>\n<p><small>Photo: Efe.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When the Spanish autonomous system was invented, many did not imagine that its defenders would end up proving that it was a bad idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[19536,10398],"tags":[22967,12510,23011,17624,2721,11462,23013,1927,11862],"class_list":["post-57658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-we-said-yesterday","category-spain","tag-cold-drop-disaster-in-spain-in-october-2024","tag-francisco-javier-marcos-izquierdo","tag-marta-serrano-balbuena","tag-military-emergency-unit-ume","tag-pedro-sanchez-castejon","tag-spain","tag-state-of-autonomies","tag-valencia","tag-valencian-community"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57658"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57658\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}