Spain, locked in El Ventorro

At first, it was mockery and intolerance toward weather warnings. When the tragedy in Valencia occurred, insults and threats on social media against the State Meteorological Agency professionals were already commonplace. Meteorologists should be defamed because they have become the pedagogues of climate change. Weathermen and women should not ruin the hotel business in the land of magnificent weekends.

A domestic dispute that connected with a much broader trend: the offensive against climate studies and the constant denigration of science. Trust in science must be undermined because it contributes to creating a social order based on reasonableness, which reinforces universalism and globalism. "Science says so? I won't believe it until I read it on my trusted social network. Long live subjectivity!" That strategy wasn't designed in Valencia, of course. That strategy is part of the larger global battle underway, but it was decisive in the Valencia tragedy.

To the wave of defamation against meteorology and the slogan not to harm the interests of the hospitality industry, traditional liberalism joined. November 4, 2023. A year before the Valencian storm, the Community of Madrid tested sending a mobile phone alert in the face of the risk of torrential rains. It was the first time this had been done in Spain. It rained heavily, but there was no serious damage in the capital. A month earlier, another severe storm had caused flooding and two deaths on the outskirts of Madrid. That mobile phone alert didn't please traditional liberalism: "Intolerable state interference in the lives of citizens!" Orwellian beep! A major row erupted in Madrid against the Aemed (Spanish Agency for the Promotion of Health and Social Development) in November 2023. Even the president of the Andalusian Regional Government, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla , got involved in the fray: "If a public body warns of 'extreme danger,' it must be very sure, because that has social and economic consequences." The Hospitality Industry Party (Partido de la Restauración) is very powerful in Spain. In the end, her pride wounded, Isabel Díaz Ayuso had to defend the warning message, prompted by the meteorologists' forecast but sent to cell phones by her government. "What we have to focus on is what has been avoided thanks to that warning," she said, with remarkable lucidity.

All the cultural battles brewing in Madrid have repercussions in the provinces. The loudspeakers in Madrid DF are powerful. A path has been opened: we must distrust the meteorologists, be careful not to alarm people too much, and keep in mind that there are other interests to defend.

The fateful week of October 29, 2024, featured a three-day long weekend, as All Saints' Day fell on a Friday. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, a magnificent weekend to get out of the house before autumn cools down. I think we're beginning to understand why the Valencian government wasn't in a hurry to issue a general alert that would have a deterrent effect on potential foreign visitors, who could number in the thousands. A lot of money.

Hostility toward weather warnings in a tourist country contributed to the disaster

It wasn't an order, it wasn't a slogan. It was an attitude. It was a perspective. It was the bottom line. Carlos Mazón had appointed lawyer Nuria Montes , president of Hosbec, Spain's largest hotel association, an entity that emerged in Benidorm, as Minister of Tourism and Industry. On the day of the incident, the Valencian regional administration had already been working for weeks on modifying urban planning legislation to authorize the construction of hotels two hundred meters from the beach. The PP-Vox pact has invalidated the five hundred meters established by the previous government led by Ximo Puig .

(Mrs. Montes was dismissed days after the incident for having confronted the victims' families who were trying to locate their missing relatives in the morgue installed at the Fira de València.)

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There was an atmosphere. There was a campaign against weather warnings. There were prejudices and interests. And then the Ventorro incident came to light. And since then, Spain has been locked in Ventorro, the realm where politicians behave manifestly irresponsibly without anything happening. Mazón hasn't resigned because he lacks civic courage, a quality he probably doesn't know about, and because Alberto Núñez Feijóo , of the Romay Beccaría school, doesn't want trouble in the Valencian PP, doesn't want trouble in general, and trusts that time will gradually dissipate the people's discontent, while he waits for the judiciary to finally liquidate Pedro Sánchez , if Carles Puidgmont doesn't do so first, terrified by the rise of the Catalan Alliance in the polls.

A year has passed, and the winner is undoubtedly Vox. Vox capitalizes on the discontent and has captured the Valencian People's Party (PP), since Mazón owes its survival to them. The Valencian Community is now the showcase for the strategic capture of the PP by its new rival. Vox was at 9% a year ago and is now galloping toward 20%.

Vox, the party of distrust, wins; it has captured Mazón and is rising across Spain.

The Dana inaugurated a strange period of collapse: the great blackout of April 28, which sparked a massive battle of interests in the electricity market; this summer's terrible forest fires in Castile and León, Extremadura, and Galicia, with evident negligence in political circles; and now, the mammogram scandal in Andalusia.

Something is happening since Spain was locked in El Ventorro.