A cry for help

Whenever a natural disaster strikes Spain, the political argument usually centres on the division of powers between the national government and regional administrations. The latter have primary responsibility for coordinating crisis response, but can request intervention from Madrid if their efforts are dwarfed by the problem - as has happened with the recent wildfires. But if that regional administration is run by the PP, one thing is clear: it will be slammed by the national government whether or not it asks for help.

Carlos Mazón, the former PP president of Valencia, was heavily criticised for not requesting Pedro Sánchez’s assistance in responding to the floods that killed over 230 people in October 2024. Rightly so: Mazón’s handling of that tragedy, from start (long lunch with journalist) to finish (asking for assistance when it was too late) richly merited his resignation - although he hung on for a year before finally stepping down.

You might have thought, then, that Madrid’s PP president Isabel Díaz Ayuso would receive reluctant praise from Sánchez’s cabinet (or at least no criticism) for immediately requesting help in managing the fires that have devastated several regions around the capital.

Alas, you’d be wrong! “We all know,” sniped transport minister Oscar Puente on X, “that the UME [the branch of the Spanish Armed Forces responsible for disaster relief] has become the new firefighting service for the autonomous communities governed by the PP.” Luckily Sánchez wasn’t so petty or petulant. He granted Ayuso’s request and declared a State of Emergency, a measure only taken once before, during last year’s blackout.

Puente can’t restart this constitutional row without having the charges turned back against the central government. It is possible for Sánchez to declare a State of Emergency without being asked to: all he needs is the approval of Congress. One can therefore ask why he didn’t immediately intervene when the floods struck Valencia in 2024. Anyone who doubts his willingness to govern unilaterally or by decree need only remember the pandemic, when he assumed a vast range of powers under a State of Alarm - the least serious of three states of exception defined in the Spanish constitution. Spain’s lockdown was later ruled illegal by the Constitutional Court, precisely because it had been imposed under a State of Alarm, rather than the more serious State of Emergency.

The crucial difference is that while Covid was a global pandemic, floods and wildfires tend to be localised (which only makes it more bizarre that the state of exception declared for the former was less serious, at least on paper, than for the latter). It would be a welcome break from the polarisation of modern politics if all parties could simply agree that Ayuso was right to ask for help, and Sánchez right to give it.