A Valencian lawyer, Curro Nicolau, has filed before the Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice the Supreme Court an appeal accusing the government of “inactivity” in the management of DANA.. The appeal is directed specifically against the President, Pedro Sánchezand the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-MarlaskaHe accuses them of an “inaction” that “has no place in our national emergency management system”.
“The President of the Government, on the same day of the tragedy, had the legal mandate to order the deployment of all the Armed Forces and State Security Forces and Corps through the Minister of the Interior and the Government delegate in the respective community, regardless of the level of alert or the aid or request of the autonomous government.” This is the argument with which the lawyer asks the Supreme Court to “claim the corresponding administrative file” and to show it to him. “in order to formalize the lawsuit”..
In a seven-page brief, Nicolau explains that he himself has had “the opportunity to help family members in the area considered ground zero of the catastrophe”, specifically in the municipality of Sedavi. “The appellant had to circumvent, 72 hours after the appointed day [29 de octubre]endless obstacles and masses of vehicles in a clear, unobstructed apocalyptic scenario“. The lawyer even attached two images taken in the municipality, showing the devastation of the streets, full of debris, mud and vehicles piled on top of each other.
“Faced with this circumstance of national emergencythe Government of Spain did not activate the so-called State of Alarm”, the appellant states and then recalls that, even so, “the exercise of certain fundamental rights has been restricted, such as the right to freedom of movement contemplated in Article 19 of the Constitution”.
The lawyer argues that “it is obvious that in the present case it was within the competence of the President of the Government to order the intervention of the Armed Forces”, and that Sánchez “had the obligation” to deploy the Army.. “The Armed Forces are the ones that have the adequate means to be able to solve a catastrophic crisis of such magnitude with hundreds of dead and missing, incalculable material damage and more than 150,000 people in a situation of helplessness because they do not have services such as water, electricity, telephony and food,” Nicolau defends before the Supreme Court.
He goes on to relate that “the President of the Government and the Minister of the Interior decided not to act by ordering” such intervention by the Army “until more than 72 hours after the flooding began on October 29.” “With a clear prejudice to my person and for tens of thousands of citizens in the Valencian Community and others such as Castilla-La Mancha”, continues the lawyer, who does not hesitate to describe the situation as “a context of calamity and the greatest hardship experienced in our country since the last Spanish Civil War”.
It is a question of a “grotesque” situationThe letter continues, and concludes: “The President of the Government did not require any kind of help or special request from the Generalitat Valenciana to intervene”.