Tens of thousands of Spaniards marched in the eastern city of Valencia on Saturday to demand the resignation of the regional president in charge of the emergency response to last week’s catastrophic floods that left more than 200 dead and others missing.
A group of protesters clashed with riot police in front of Valencia’s city hall, where the protestors started their march to the seat of the regional government. Police used batons to beat them back.
Regional leader Carlos Mazon is under immense pressure after his administration failed to issue flood alerts to citizens’ cellphones until hours after the flooding started on the night of Oct. 29.
Photo: Reuters
Many marchers held up homemade signs or chanted: “Mazon resign.”
Others carried signs with messages such as: “You killed us.”
Upon arrival at the regional government seat, some protesters slung mud at the building and left handprints of the muck on its facade.
Earlier on Saturday, Mazon told regional broadcaster A Punt that “there will be time to hold officials accountable,” but that now “is time to keep cleaning our streets, helping people and rebuilding.”
He said that he “respected” the march.
Mazon, of the conservative People’s Party, is also being criticized for what people perceive as the slow and chaotic response to the natural disaster. It took days for officials to mobilize the thousands of police reinforcements and soldiers that the regional government asked central authorities to send in.
In Spain, regional governments are charged with handling civil protection and can ask the national government in Madrid, led by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, for extra resources.
Mazon has defended his handling of the crisis saying that its magnitude was unforeseeable and that his administration did not receive sufficient warnings from central authorities.
However, Spain’s weather agency issued a red alert, the highest level of warning, for bad weather as early as 7:30am on Oct. 29 as the disaster loomed.
Some communities were flooded by 6pm. It took until after 8pm for Mazon’s administration to send out alerts to people’s cellphones.
Mazon was with Spain’s royals and Socialist prime minister when they were pelted with mud by enraged residents during their first visit to a devastated area last weekend.
Sara Sanchez Gurillo attended the protest, because she had lost her brother-in-law, 62-year-old Candido Molina Pulgarin.
She wanted Mazon to go, but also had harsh words for the country’s leaders.
“It’s shameful what has happened,” Sanchez said. “They knew that the sky was going to fall and yet they didn’t warn anyone. They didn’t evacuate the people. We want them to resign.”
The death toll stood at 220 victims on Saturday as the search for bodies goes on.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
‘COMING MENACINGLY’: The CDC advised wearing a mask when visiting hospitals or long-term care centers, on public transportation and in crowded indoor venues Hospital visits for COVID-19 last week increased by 113 percent to 41,402, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, as it encouraged people to wear a mask in three public settings to prevent infection. CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said weekly hospital visits for COVID-19 have been increasing for seven consecutive weeks, and 102 severe COVID-19 cases and 19 deaths were confirmed last week, both the highest weekly numbers this year. CDC physician Lee Tsung-han (李宗翰) said the youngest person hospitalized due to the disease this year was reported last week, a one-month-old baby, who does not
RSS