The PP parliamentary spokeswoman, Ester Muñoz, has rejected on Monday that the autonomous communities affected by one of the greatest waves of forest fire since there are records are going to claim the declaration of level 3 of emergency, which would mean that the central government would assume the coordination of extinction tasks because “it would not imply more means” to fight against fire. “The media of the communities are 100%,” he said at a press conference. “The state media, which is the UME and the BRIF, are 100%,” he acknowledged.
Muñoz has appeared before the media to attack the central government and subtract responsibility from the most affected autonomous communities, Galicia and Castilla y León, where the PP has the power. The leader of the PP, a native of León, where she exercised as delegate of the Board, has struggled to subtract relevance to the role of regional governments, while indicating those who are supposedly setting fires and causing the crisis. “All Spaniards know that 90% of the fires are caused by the hand of man. In the case of the last fires, we are also telling that they are caused,” he said.
The PP spokeswoman has reinforced the idea that the fire wave was “unpredictable” and that the magnitude and simultaneity of fires prevents them from being saved with the media of the autonomous communities, who have competition both in prevention and extinction.
Muñoz has argued that the government refuses to mobilize more means of the central administration despite the requests of the regional presidents of the PP. “The requests that most of the Armed Forces are incorporated through the UME are not being attended,” he said. And that she herself has recognized that the military does not have the ability to attack fires. “It is true that the Armed Forces, the Army of Earth or the Navy, cannot make direct action against fire. That's what the UME and the operating devices of the autonomous communities,” he said.
Muñoz has defended that the military have “engineers battalions that have bulldozers and motor motioners that can help make firewalls in villages to help operations that are in the fire” and “have helicopters to transport gangs from other autonomous communities to help against fire” or “to be able to bring heavy machinery”. “They have many devices to be able to make surveillance with the Civil Guard and prevent new foci and people who continue to light,” he added.
The leader of the PP has repeatedly reiterated that this year's wave of fire has as a characteristic that they are being caused and even reactivated at night, although he has not said who or why they would be doing it. He has assured that there are “groups of young people who burn for fun, apart from piómanos.”
Muñoz has insisted on minimizing the responsibility of his party partners and has relied on the exceptionality of the fire wave to reduce the importance of prevention. “What we are seeing is extraordinary by heat, due to the lack of moisture, because of the winds that make it impossible to face the fires and simultaneity,” he said. “You can dedicate many resources to prevent,” he said, to add: “What is difficult is to find out that there are going to be pyelomaniac people, fucking wick to our entire territory.”
The State Pact, a “smoke curtain”
Muñoz has lashed up harshly at the Government, especially against the president, Pedro Sánchez, who yesterday raised the need to achieve a state pact to address the adaptation to the climatic emergency, which has in the fires one of its main consequences.
The PP spokeswoman has considered a “smoke curtain” Sánchez's proposal. “The status pacts do not end the flames. The status pacts now do not serve to recover the lost. People expected much more than a flight forward or a smoke curtain to try to save the image after having been missing for a week,” he said.
“Bringing a state pact on climate change is as if in the midst of a tsunami you bring a pact for the oceans. It does not serve absolutely at all,” he insisted. “It aims to ideologize, confront and polarize Spanish society,” he added. Muñoz has settled: “This of a state pact is removed as a scarf from a hat every time Mr. Sánchez has a fire.”
But immediately, Muñoz has claimed a “state pact” between autonomous communities and government to address the financing of prevention and extinction services, which depend on the regions. “The presidents have been asking Mr. Sánchez for years to talk about this at a fiscal and financial policy conference that is to be part of a State pact because there are communities that have more forest mass than others and, therefore, we are bound to fires in a way greater than other autonomous communities.”
