Spain Announces €10.6B in Flood Relief

Facts

• Spain's government on Tuesday announced a €10.6B ($11.4B) relief package to help those affected by last week's floods that killed at least 217 people.^[1]
• The package includes €838M ($902M) in cash payouts to small businesses and self-employed workers affected by the floods, while €5B ($5.4B) was earmarked for government-backed loans. The national government will finance all clean-up costs and half of the costs for infrastructure repair incurred by local councils.^[1]
• It came as regional authorities in Valencia, the hardest-hit region, said that at least 89 people remain missing, warning that those numbers could yet rise as more people are identified.^[2]
• Announcing the government response after chairing a cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said, "There are still missing persons to be located, homes and businesses destroyed, buried under the mud and many people suffering severe shortages...We have to keep working."^[1][3]
• Facing criticism for a perceived slow government response, Sánchez said that the government deployed 15K military and police personnel, alongside other officials, to help with the recovery. He defended not calling a state of emergency, stating this would have taken control away from local authorities and made the response less efficient.^[2]
• Sánchez further said he had informed colleagues in the EU that he would not be attending meetings of the bloc scheduled in Hungary for Thursday so that he could continue to manage the government response to the flooding.^[3]

Sources: ^[1]Al Jazeera, ^[2]The Guardian and ^[3]Euractiv.

Narratives

• Left narrative, as provided by The Guardian. The Spanish government is doing all it can to help those affected by the flooding. That includes this relief package and also deploying more than 15K soldiers and police officers to help with recovery and rescue operations.
• Right narrative, as provided by Vox Party on X. When Morocco faced an earthquake, it took the left-wing Spanish government a few hours to allocate funds to help with the response. Why has it taken over a week to make the same response available to its own people?