I have a memory from many years ago at Mestalla, Valencia's home ground, that I've never forgotten. In the tunnel leading to the locker room, where the players walked onto the field, there was a text painted in red letters on the white wall above our heads, with a line and a text that read: "This is where the water reached the river of 1957." It killed at least 81 people.
Today marks one year since another flood killed 229 people. There's a fundamental difference between the two: with the technological means of the 21st century, almost everyone could have been saved. From early in the morning of October 29, 2024, it was already clear, with no margin of error, that the main rainfall, hundreds of liters per square meter, would fall in the headwaters of rivers and ravines and could catastrophically flood areas where no rain would have fallen at all. And so it was.
This was stated by Victoria Rosselló Botey, PhD in Physics and Head of Meteorology at À Punt, who explained to Francesc Garriga, in The Afternoon Catalunya Ràdio, how the mayor of Utiel saved hundreds of lives because in the morning, as soon as he heard the flood on the weather forecast, he sent the students home. The same meteorologist and her colleagues, after telling the story on TV repeatedly, saved lives by the simple procedure of sending WhatsApp friends and acquaintances to move to the highest floors they could find.
Under these conditions, Mazón's resignation is a minimum measure of moral hygiene. But what is appropriate is for him to sit in the dock for having ignored the most basic responsibility of any government, which is to protect the population. And the fact that Feijóo has been supporting him all this year makes him an accomplice to undignified behavior.
