Eleven days after the tsunami of mud and water that overwhelmed 78 municipalities in the province ofthe Valencians and torn at least 220 livesindignation took to the streets in the capital, where tens of thousands of people (130 thousand attendances) they protested against the “failure management” of the emergency caused by the Dana and the resulting floods. Governor Carlos Mazòn, of the Popular Party, ended up in the crosshairs and was asked to resign. At the height of an indignation already expressed in the protests during last Sunday’s visit of King Felipe VI and Letizia, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, and Mazòn himself to Paiporta, one of the municipalities brought to its knees by the catastrophe.
At the head of Saturday evening’s procession, called by 68 bodies and social organizations and which started at 6pm from the Plaza del Ayuntamiento, was an enormous banner with the words “Mazòn dimisiòn” written on it, on an upside-down image of the Valencian governor, while shouts of « Mazon resign, come out of hiding” or “they got their hands dirty with blood, not mud”. Before the start of the march, the spokespersons of the associations, Ana Oliver and Beatriz Cardona, denounced «the negligence of the government of the Valencian Community» first for the delays in raising the alarm to the population and then for the chaotic management of the emergency «They have demonstrated that they are incompetent. They do not deserve to manage the lives of Valencians”, the indictment. “They did not know how to manage a natural catastrophe. They did not know how to raise the alarm, they do not know how to organize the cleaning and collection of mud and debris and they will obviously not be able to organize it. the reconstruction that our country needs. So they must leave immediately”, their request. The march initially took place in silence, in memory of the victims of the flood, then slogans were raised from the procession against Mazon but also against the central government, which “could have done much more”.
On the sidelines of the protest, dozens of pairs of muddy shoes were brought to the regional government headquarters. Among the demonstrators, entire families and people of all ages, and many volunteers who have helped in recent days to clean up the mud and piles of scrap and debris from the affected municipalities. Moments of tension were experienced when some groups of demonstrators set off firecrackers against the Municipality headquarters. The strong police deployment dispersed a group that had thrown oranges and mud balls at the administration headquarters. During the march there were shouts of “murderers!” and «El pueblo muriendo y Mazon comiendo (the people died and Mazon ate)», in reference to the hours’ delay with which the governor joined the crisis unit at the emergency operations center on October 29th, when already entire municipalities had already been overwhelmed by floods. Indignation flooded not only the center of Valencia, but also that of Madrid, where thousands of people demonstrated in Puerta del Sol calling for “Mazòn dimision”, and in other cities such as Alicante, Gandia or Elche.