The wave of forest fires affecting Spain has led to a repeat of what happened during last year's floods in Valencia.<\/p>\n
As happened then, Pedro S\u00e1nchez's government is handling a new natural disaster poorly and late<\/strong>, mobilizing the Army late and with air resources diminished by the lack of general state budgets<\/a>, due to the weakness of the executive due to the lack of parliamentary support and S\u00e1nchez's refusal to call elections. To this we must add the infamous jokes made by Minister \u00d3scar Puente about the fires<\/a>, which have provoked much indignation.<\/p>\n Yesterday, S\u00e1nchez traveled to Galicia to visit the affected area. After reducing government spending on fire prevention by almost half<\/a>, and having spent seven years in power based on a policy of unilateral decisions and a lack of consensus-building with the opposition, yesterday S\u00e1nchez called for a state pact against the \"climate emergency\"<\/a>, a shocking statement considering that, according to the Civil Guard, 96% of these fires are arson and there are already 27 arrests and 86 under investigation<\/a> in relation to them.<\/p>\n S\u00e1nchez's call for a \"climate emergency\" sounds like a joke, given that, according to the newspaper Abc, the Prime Minister used a plane and two helicopters to travel to Galicia<\/a>. One of the helicopters was also used as a mere decoy, that is, to throw people off the scent<\/strong>, perhaps because the socialist leader was afraid that a popular reaction like the one that occurred in November in Paiporta would be repeated in Galicia due to the government's late response to the floods that affected the Valencian Community.<\/p>\n Certainly, it is absurd that when what the affected areas need is more resources to fight the fires<\/strong>, resources that the government has been administering in dribs and drabs and with the same delay as the floods in Valencia, S\u00e1nchez is proposing a State pact on the \"climate emergency\", as if that would extinguish the fires<\/strong>. Fires that are aggravated, it must be said, by \"green\" policies promoted by the government and that generate much criticism in rural Spain, by subjecting it to all kinds of bureaucratic obstacles to being able to prevent the causes of fires<\/strong> as has been done for centuries, especially by allowing livestock farming to contribute to eliminating plant fuel from the mountains.<\/p>\n In the end, what is clear is that S\u00e1nchez's proposed state pact is nothing more than a distraction, an attempt to grab headlines<\/strong> to displace the criticism the government has been receiving in recent days for its lack of response to the fires. Yesterday, S\u00e1nchez once again demonstrated that his specialty is creating crude smokescreens instead of responding to the real problems<\/strong>, problems for which the government only offers excuses, statistical window dressing, and magic bullets that don't work and only serve to aggravate natural disasters such as the floods in Valencia and the wave of fires currently affecting northwestern Spain.<\/p>\n ---<\/p>\n
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