Look for the ETA of the fires and do not ask about climate change

Arrest the usual suspects. Alfonso Fernández Mañueco already has a formula to escape the political responsibility of his Government in relation to the wave of forest fires that is punishing Castilla y León. He was a bit beset by circumstances. At a time when extreme weather events are the new normal and not long after Spain suffered temperatures approaching forty degrees before Before summer began, the regional government decided not to bring forward the start of the high fire risk season, which begins on July 1 every year. No exceptional measures, no recognition that climate threats are real. And nothing to bother Vox, a partner in the coalition government, and its denialism.

Mañueco expanded on Monday during a visit to Burgos his theory about the internal enemy that is causing all these mishaps. “Most fires across the country are suspected to be manmade.” Some are “allegedly reckless and others allegedly intentional”.

He kept repeating the word ‘allegedly’ so that he couldn’t be accused of offering a conspiracy theory without evidence. Therefore, he demanded that the Ministry of the Interior put more police and civil guards on the mountain (one next to each tree?), as Pedro Rollán had already done last week on behalf of the PP’s national leadership.

The message is clear: no more forest rangers or firefighting equipment is needed. It is enough to fill the mounts with policemen. That will have the necessary dissuasive effect and thus the fires will end.

The president of Castilla y León has not invented everything. There are many intentional fires in Spain, as well as accidental ones, although not with the intention of burning thousands of hectares. Ranchers who intend to regenerate pastures. Farmers with similar intentions. Someone says one day that he is not going to comply with the regulations or that the government is not going to tell him what he has to do with his land. Weather conditions help them become uncontrolled.

There have always been those situations. But in the end the responsibility lies with the governments that have the powers. To the extent that the risk is greater, each Government must invest in prevention and have the necessary means of extinction. If you feel overwhelmed, you can ask for help.

Mañueco was not simply describing a situation that occurs in many summers. He was denouncing an alleged dark plot whose ultimate goal is not to cause a fire in one specific place or another: “They are trying to burn Castilla y León.” It is a very large region – nine provinces, 94,000 square kilometers of surface, 2,248 municipalities – so the enemy must be very powerful.

In his statement before the journalists, he made a revealing error: “We are talking about fires caused with political intent… (Mañueco pauses, doubts, it seems that he has made a mistake and continues), with environmental intent.”

Faced with an enemy with such sinister intentions, how can you accuse your government of anything? His Minister for the Environment, Juan Carlos Suárez Quiñones, had previously gone further by denouncing that the prevention work could not be done because of “the environmentalists”. There is no knowledge of any fire caused by environmental groups, nor do they have power over the decisions made by the Government of PP and Vox in the exercise of their powers.

According to the person in charge of the forest campaign at Greenpeace, Suárez “is a councilor and an autonomous community in which, after an anticipated summer with a warm May, an evident drought and a heat wave that is not surprising because it was announced, the extinction operation was not one hundred percent”.

Mañueco had everything very clear, except for what the media from all over Europe are mentioning in the face of the proliferation of fires this summer. It did not even occur to him to talk about climate change as a factor that increases the risks. All the more, on Monday he referred to “climatic anomalies”, which is not very well known what it means. Last Saturday, he referred to territories “subjected to a situation of stress due to natural phenomena”, which elevates euphemisms to a new category.

It is not the first time that the PP alludes to mysterious pyromaniac plots when he is surrounded by flames. It was precisely the current leader of the party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who resorted to an unknown “forest terrorism” as the cause of the fires that occurred in Galicia in 2017. No evidence was ever provided to support that thesis. It didn’t matter too much either. It was about offloading the responsibility of the Government from him by targeting an enemy that no one could find.

Before July 1, there were already fires in Castilla y León and it was verified how the Government had prepared the device. “The fire operation in Castilla y León it is pathetic, anachronistic and illegal”, said the CCOO delegate weeks later. The complaint of this union has been admitted for processing by the Prosecutor’s Office. “Zamora is forgotten and the policy of neglect of the Board with the climatic conditions that we have is a tinderbox”, said a firefighter a few days ago, accusing the Diputación and the regional government alike.

In the image section, Vice President Juan García-Gallardo, from Vox, went with his suede shoes to a burned area of ​​Zamora to take some photos that he posted on his Twitter account. He only appeared with a sad face. He even bent down to carefully touch what was left of a burned bush in a supposed gesture of solidarity with all trees.

With such a partner, it is normal that Mañueco cannot talk about climate change and hence his predilection for euphemisms. He is not very courageous and he is politically stressed, because he cannot refer to climate change when his far-right partner maintains that it does not exist. It is not strange that a Spectra of the fires has been invented to blame her for the catastrophe. Anything before there is talk of managing him and his partner.

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