CATARROJA, Spain — By the time Valencia’s regional authorities warned residents that heavy rains were coming, Manuel Álvarez had already drowned in the floodwaters.
Oct. 29, 2024 had been a relatively normal day for the 80-year-old semi-retired barber. Not a drop of rain had fallen in his hometown of Catarroja, located south of Spain’s third-largest city. He had just returned home from his annual check-up when the waters began to rush in.
The national meteorological service had forecast dangerous rainfall that day, but Regional President Carlos Mazón, a prominent member of Spain’s center-right People’s Party (PP) — the Spanish affiliate of the European People’s Party (EPP) — had downplayed the warnings. His government’s late response to the disaster, which came after countless lives had already been lost, prompted a judicial investigation and led tens of thousands of Valencians to take part in mass protests demanding his resignation.
The EPP now risks becoming the target of this local fury as its members descend on the city for Tuesday’s annual party conference, held on the six-month anniversary of the tragedy.
Against the backdrop of major demonstrations, the party’s center-right politicians will be forced to come to terms with their Spain problem: a national affiliate that routinely drags domestic politics onto the EU stage, is lukewarm in its support of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and breaks party orthodoxy by partnering with the far right. Now it’s also implicated in the botched handling of one of the deadliest national disasters in recent history.
“Catarroja is in a flood plain, and [my father] had dealt with overflows before, but this was something totally different,” Álvarez’s daughter, Rosa María Álvarez Gil, told POLITICO during an interview in the room where Manuel spent his final moments. The intensity of the flood is still evident in the century-old home, with a brown line near the ceiling marking how high the waters rose.
“He was in great shape — he had gotten a clean bill of health that very afternoon, but the force of [the] water was too strong,” she said, adding the water had risen astonishingly quickly. “It was already up to his shoulders, and the last thing he said to me before the line went dead was, ‘Cariño, no puc, no puc’ [Darling, I can’t, I can’t].”
A foretold disaster
Backed by the far-right Vox party, Mazón’s administration came to power in 2023 and adopted many of its then-coalition partners’ climate-skeptic positions. As a cost-cutting measure, the regional government eliminated the Valencian Emergency Unit — an elite rapid response force tasked with addressing the impact of crisis situations — and prioritized keeping the region open for business, no matter what.
That may explain why, in the days leading up to the disaster, warnings from Spain’s national meteorological agency were ignored — including an alert issued that very morning, noting the “extreme danger” posed by the forecast rains. But Mazón insisted on sticking to his schedule, including a private lunch that stretched until the early evening.
In recent court testimony, Salomé Pradas, the regional minister in charge of crisis management, admitted she’d had no idea how to address the emergency situation. Although the rivers began overflowing around noon, she rejected the national government’s offer to deploy the elite Military Emergencies Unit until 3 p.m. Mazón, meanwhile, didn’t answer her calls until well after many of the area’s rivers had overflown, and didn’t arrive at the emergency services center until 8:28 p.m.
By then, the majority of the flood’s victims were already dead.
Pradas is now the subject of a judicial probe meant to establish blame for the disaster. Mazón isn’t being formally investigated because his presidential status means he can only be indicted by Valencia’s High Court of Justice. Although he was invited to testify on a voluntary basis, he has so far declined to do so.
“My father and the other 227 people who died in this flood are victims of the Mazón government’s ineptitude,” said Álvarez Gil, who now presides over the association representing the families of flood victims.
Manuel Álvarez’s body was recovered in a nearby park the day after the flood. He had drowned just minutes before regional authorities sent out their first text message alert encouraging locals to avoid travel “as a precautionary measure … due to heavy rains.”
“The fact that that man, that murderer, has yet to resign is an insult to every one of them,” Álvarez Gil said.
Headache for the EPP
Spain’s decentralized administrative system gives regional governments exclusive control over the management of emergency situations. Because the EPP’s Spanish affiliate controls Valencia’s regional executive, Europe’s center-right party has been dragged into the controversy surrounding the disaster.
Initially, the PP attempted to protect Mazón by shifting the blame onto then-Deputy Prime Minister Teresa Ribera, Madrid’s pick for the Commission. High-ranking EPP members initially spoke out against her candidacy, but eventually green-lit her nomination as part of a larger deal. But Spain’s center-right MEPs refused to let the matter go, subjecting Ribera to a brutal confirmation hearing and taking the remarkable step of voting against von der Leyen’s second administration to underscore their discontent.
The episode was emblematic of the PP’s determination to fight domestic wars on the European stage — long a thorn in the EPP’s side, and a tendency that could hijack tomorrow’s summit.
Despite scoring a major victory in 2023’s nationwide regional and municipal elections, the PP has struggled to find its way after failing to unseat socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in that summer’s snap elections. Relegated to the opposition, it has been resorting to a strategy of blanket rejection regarding anything Sánchez supports — whether in Madrid or Brussels.
Granted anonymity to speak freely ahead of the party conference, one EPP official criticized the affiliate party’s obsession with “making everything a fight with the Socialists … As long as the Spaniards make everything a bullfight in Parliament, nobody will want to work with them.”
Not everyone shares that opinion. One EPP lawmaker, also granted anonymity, expressed admiration for Spain’s rebellious streak — a plus among those who appreciate its role as a counterweight to the party’s historically dominant German wing.
There is, however, less enthusiasm over the PP’s close relations with Vox, which is affiliated with the far-right Patriots at the EU level. Both Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and German Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz have rejected collaboration with the far right in their home countries. Their position is echoed by EPP President Manfred Weber, who earlier this month urged party members to endeavor to defeat Europe’s “authoritarian wave.”
In Spain, however, the PP and Vox have shared coalition governments in around 100 Spanish cities since 2023 — Valencia among them. And while they currently don’t govern together in any of Spain’s regions, they remain open to passing key legislation.
Last month, the PP and Vox forged an agreement to pass Valencia’s budget bill. The draft legislation includes anti-immigrant rhetoric and targets von der Leyen’s signature European Green Deal — which Mazón recently denounced as a “radical” scheme that is “neither European, nor green, nor a deal.”
Paradoxically, at this week’s conference, the PP intends to table a resolution “for an EU ready to respond to climate emergencies.” The resolution calls for strengthening “preparedness against climate emergencies,” even as party members like Mazón denounce “climate dogmatism” in the regions they govern.
Neither the PP nor the party’s regional affiliate in Valencia responded to POLITICO’s repeated requests for comment.
Valencian vengeance
Tuesday’s summit is overshadowed by morbid coincidences. Not only is it being held exactly six months after the flood, but it’s taking place in the same conference complex that was used as a makeshift morgue in the disaster’s aftermath.
A major demonstration — the latest in a series that have drawn tens of thousands of protestors — has been organized by a vast consortium of associations demanding Mazón’s resignation. Security forces are on call to keep summit attendees protected at the venue and to secure the hotels where VIPs are staying, as emotions remain frayed in a region where locals attacked Spain’s prime minister and pelted King Felipe VI with mud when they visited the flood zones.
“I imagine they don’t realize just how tense the situation is over here,” said Francesc Roig, lawmaker for the center-left Compromis party in Valencia’s regional parliament. He expressed shock that the EPP had moved forward with the event, and predicted locals would be infuriated by party notables socializing, stressing it wasn’t just the botched response but the slow pace of recovery efforts that angered many.
“Half a year after the disaster, there are still 6,000 elevators that have yet to be repaired,” he said. “There are thousands of people — elderly residents, folks with disabilities — who are trapped in their homes, who haven’t gone outside in months … The death toll keeps rising because people are developing respiratory illnesses as a result of living in houses that are partially ruined and full of mold.”
The EPP, however, dismissed concerns that the conference could be overshadowed by demonstrations: “We’re thankful for Partido Popular co-hosting this congress and having invited us to go to Valencia,” Tom Vandenkendelaere, Weber’s head of cabinet, told POLITICO. “We are looking forward to a successful congress.”
Ahead of the summit, the three main victims’ associations sent an open letter to von der Leyen, requesting a meeting and calling on her to issue a “clear and public condemnation” of Mazón’s handling of the tragedy. And though the Commission president declined to meet with them in Valencia, in a letter seen by POLITICO, her head of cabinet, Bjoern Seibert, invited victims to a meeting in Brussels on May 13.
The letter indicates von der Leyen is ready to hear from Mazón’s critics. “We recognize the immense pain and loss you have suffered and the tragedy you describe,” Seibert wrote. “We believe that your voices deserve to be heard in the most meaningful way.”
Álvarez Gil said the victims are determined to ensure von der Leyen knows what took place in Valencia six months ago: “I want her to know what happened here,” she said. “I want her to know what it means for her, and for Europe’s image in Valencia, to be photographed beside people who have blood on their hands.”
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