More than 200 dead, collapsed communities and destroyed infrastructure. The balance of the DANA1 in the Valencian Country leaves us devastated as the days go by, and the sum of negligence is becoming fertile ground not only for solidarity responses, but also for those of a reactionary and extreme right nature.
That is why, when the catastrophe overwhelms us, when the urgency of the response pushes us, the duty of revolutionary militants is to be able to combine the immediacy of the needs at ground zero with popular solidarity and in-depth analysis to articulate a memory of the disaster that points to those responsible and marks a horizon of conflict.
Yes, we want to talk about the DANA and its consequences from the perspective of conflict because none of the adverse meteorological phenomena we are experiencing happen in a vacuum: they are symptoms of the ecological crisis we live in, of its worsening in the Mediterranean region and of the vulnerability that our predatory mode of production and occupation of the territory has left us with. The exceptional nature of its violence must not be erased from our minds, it must not lead us to depoliticise the catastrophe.
Climate Turbulence In Times Of Ecological Crisis
If we take our analyses seriously when we talk about the ecological crisis and its leaps in scale in quality and quantity, it is essential that we do not disconnect them from the catastrophes we are currently experiencing. The Mediterranean region, due to its physical and geographical characteristics, is one of the most vulnerable areas: our sea and our air are much warmer than in other territories and, in a context of rising temperatures, this aggravates the effects of torrential rains and floods, which will become more frequent and stronger. As Gisela Torrents explains, a warmer atmosphere can store more water vapour, specifically: for each extra degree, our air can retain 7% more water vapour, which will probably end up falling all at once causing phenomena similar to those we have observed these days with the passage of the DANA in our territory. This reality is taking shape at a time when temperatures are already 1.3ºC higher than in pre-industrial times, and its consequences on the ground are aggravated by an occupation of the territory that is blind to existing geographical features. The materiality of the climatic chaos that we are seeing in the Valencian Country tells us so.
When we put into perspective the climatic vulnerability in which the context of the ecological crisis places us, we must understand that we can improve the warning systems for the population, increase the provision of emergency equipment to act more quickly and efficiently, but we cannot avoid the rain and possibly not much of the material damage it has caused if we continue to occupy potentially flood-prone areas and continue to carve up the territory. We must therefore put on the table that, just as with heat waves, the loss of fertile soils or sixth-generation fires, torrential rains and floods such as those of DANA are closely linked to the interests of a fossil capitalism that, at the cost of profits, makes climatic barbarism the norm.
The economic and power structures that impose a mode of production based on the constant burning of huge quantities of fossil fuels have made the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, the destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of species, normal. It is essential to directly confront those who support fossil capitalism, those who profit from its destruction and create new markets to speculate on the transition. We cannot tolerate that fossil capital continues to be in excellent health, nor that governments continue to allocate millions in aid to it, while we, the workers, continue to pay the price for the catastrophes that are accelerating.
We must escape from dependence on fossil fuels, dismantle the corporate and state power structures that sustain it, make drastic changes to the way we organise our lives and rethink the productive structure so that we reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions. This roadmap is vital in the midst of the climatic turbulence of the ecological crisis and must be implemented from democratic and planned coordinates, without losing sight of the fact that for us this is not about economic imperatives or national security, it is about life, dignified lives. Stopping the rise in temperatures and minimising the effects of the climate crisis is not only a question of survival but also of class conflict: faced with the uncertainty of the impacts generated by the different cracks in the ecological crisis, we want to anticipate everything that is possible and break with fossil capitalism and its markets for this agenda.
Re-Load Of The Binomial Terror: Construction And Finance
For decades the framework of fossil capitalism in the Spanish State has been based and configured around the specialisation of the construction and finance binomial. Through them, our territories have been constituted as a playing field for the interests of capital, assuming land as a value for consumption and not for use, as just another commodity from which to extract profits. Examples of this can be found in each of the urban booms that have occurred since the 1970s as a way of reactivating the economy, making unbridled construction a profitable business niche for a few and carving up the territory, a practice that is seductive for governments of all colours in times of crisis.
The proposals for the expansion of infrastructures such as the port of Valencia or El Prat airport, together with the promotion of infrastructures linked to the tourist monoculture such as the Hard Rock Café in Tarragona, the Olympic Games in the Pyrenees, the America's Cup in Valencia and Barcelona, are part of a speculative economic continuum. The commercialisation of all land, whether agricultural, as we see with the new urbanisation proposal in Benimaclet or floodable as we see with the Urban Master Plan of the Tres Xemeneies in Sant Adrià del Besòs and Badalona, is accepted without thinking through its consequences increasing our vulnerability.
If we focus on the proliferation of torrential rains and floods, it is essential to point out the eco-social implications of the environmental and territorial blindness of the construction-finance binomial when it promotes the construction of flood-prone areas and when it believes that with the construction of artificial defence barriers the danger posed by the occupation of spaces close to rivers and ravines disappears. An important conclusion emerges from this: the impacts of the DANA have not only been serious due to their severity, they have been tragic and devastating due to an uncontrolled model of land occupation, promoted by construction companies and investment funds, and supported by governments. Therefore, to avoid repeats we must review everything built in flood zones, stop all new construction permits, and move facilities and homes from high-risk areas to safe locations.
Currently, around 2.7 million people in the Spanish State live in high-risk flood zones and, according to the central government's new Flood Risk Management Plan, within these detected flood zones there are 45 hospitals, 985 educational centres, 358 nursing homes and 9 airports. The risk that these data indicate should not paralyse us, it should encourage a rethinking of land planning and that we do so in a way that is conscious of the physical limits, the needs of daily reproduction of the lives of the residents, and the resources that exist today. And this implies hard but important thinking: we cannot allow ourselves to rebuild what has been destroyed in flood zones, we cannot allow ourselves to make the disaster economy a new market niche for the binomial of terror, construction and finance.
The safety of public facilities, communities and homes cannot depend on new works that act as artificial defences against torrential rains and floods, and it is also not a question of desirability. As Ecologistas en Acción [Ecologists in Action] highlighted in its statement, building new water barriers is not a solution to flooding: it makes it worse. They generate false feelings of security, leading to continued occupation of spaces that originally belonged to the river course and ravines. They force the water into a smaller space, increasing the speed and height of the water, so that when it overflows the consequences are more serious due to the intensity; and they do not eliminate it, they only move it from one place to another, displacing the impacts from one area to another. Hence the importance of not placing one more brick in flood zones, not one more license being approved, and not allowing the economy of our lands to depend on them. How we build and where, how we make the structures that allow us to move, how we relate to nature and the environmental assets (rivers, forests, seas...) of the places where we live are key pieces in order to rethink the model of territorial occupation taking into account the uncertainties of the ecological crisis.
In this sense, it is important to highlight that the impacts of the DANA are not merely limited to the municipalities where thousands of volunteers dedicate time and resources to make them habitable again: the cleaning tasks also play a central role in avoiding impacts on the Albufera. Stagnation of wastewater, pollutants, and the accumulation of waste pose a risk to the health and safety of people and the diverse ecosystem that wetlands contain. We must speak out without creating dichotomies, because the potential impacts on the Albufera could expose endangered species and modify the eco-social functions of the area. And the fact that changes in the ecological and environmental metabolism of the land may occur is not a trivial matter: wetlands are drains capable of capturing and storing twice as much carbon as forests, and their destruction increases the vulnerability of the region to climate change. We cannot allow the interests of the duo of construction-finance to deepen the consequences of the ecological crisis, much less hinder the cure, protection and environmental recovery of the affected areas.
But it is necessary to go one step further to stop this destructive binomial: until 2015, the flood zones of the Spanish State were not declared non-urbanisable land; and, even so, even today, we see how reclassifications occur when the interests of construction-finance are at stake. That is why we not only have to change the model of land occupation, but we must also hold accountable those who have promoted, executed, facilitated and approved new constructions in flood zones, and who still defend their interest for the good of the economy without caring about our lives.
From an eco-socialist perspectives the response to the emergency caused by the DANA in flood zones must also involve an urgent socialisation of housing in non-flood zones: expropriating empty houses and those in the hands of vulture funds, and recovering tourist and seasonal apartments for residential use. This response must be combined with the transfer of the facilities located in ground zero to safe areas and in decent conditions – counting on the neighbours and community networks in the process of deciding the future of this – and with territorial adaptation processes such as the renaturalisation of ravines, the permeability of streets and roads, the expansion of tree pits in the city, etc.
Denying Evidence Takes Lives, As Do The Cuts Themselves
The worsening of the meteorological manifestations of the ecological crisis combined with a model of land occupation blind to flood zones frame the climatic and physical context of the effects of the DANA, but do not explain the reasons why weeks after the catastrophe l'Horta Sur [the area in Valencia hardest hit by the catastophe] remains collapsed. They do not explain why the alerts were not activated from the outset once the AEMET [the state meteorological association] warned of the arrival of the DANA in the Valencian Community, nor the lack of coordination of the protection services - which led to a delay in aid at a critical moment - nor the saturation of the telephone switchboards due to the overflow. Nor do they explain why it is the neighbours and volunteers who have had to respond to the emergency from the very beginning, or why they are the ones who are on the front line organising cleaning teams and caring for those most affected, covering the gaps of governments that are not present and have not taken charge of addressing the most urgent needs. The elements that explain the silences and political inefficiencies of the first order that have occurred before, during and after the passage of the DANA are the consequences of a conscious political commitment by those who govern these times of ecological crisis from reactionary, conservative and liberalising positions.
The lack of responses from the Generalitat Valenciana [the totality of the self-governing bodies under which Valencia is politically organised] makes explicit the material consequences on our bodies, lives and territories of a view that ignores the existence of climate change, that underestimates it and downplays its importance until its impacts overflow the political and social arena. They are the result of denying evidence at all costs until the effects come knocking on the office door and become headlines. The strategy of climate denialism is simple: discredit everything that conflicts with the logic of profit-making, reject everything that prioritises the common good over individual freedom, and invalidate everything that displaces private property from the centre of the economy. The reactionary and neoliberal perspective that it embodies prevents action being taken on the real risks and threats, as well as on the causes that provoke them, in order to maintain the status quo of the circuits of production and reproduction of capital.
Denialism cuts lives short. Connivance with the economic imperative puts business interests ahead of the health and safety of workers, and magnifies the deadly impacts of phenomena such as DANA. Many of the people who died or disappeared would not have been in the wrong place at the wrong time if it were not for companies that forced them to stay in their workplaces, if it were not for the blackmail of having to sell their labour force to live, despite the extreme risk that this entailed. It is important to remember that the civil protection alarm did not sound until 8:15 p.m., after the end of the working day for most of the population; and two hours after the first floods occurred, which caused the collapse of roads with hundreds of cars that still today hinder access to some of the most affected towns.
Mercadona, Ikea and Glovo were some of the widely known companies that put their workers at extreme risk, but the Valencian administration did not react any better with non-essential public workers. The red alert that did not sound meant that life continued with an apparent normality, with business as usual taking precedence, hoping that the rains would not end as they did. And as stated in the complaint filed by the CGT País Valencià union, this conduct constituted multiple crimes against the rights of the workers and they must be held accountable.
It is no use asking companies and governments not to put our lives at risk. It is no use just acting by toughening up laws on occupational risks, emergency plans or safety protocols, which remain a dead letter if there is no union counterpower with the capacity to impose its authority and trust. We have a clear task: to prevent this unprecedented episode from happening again we must also advance in building this union power that makes it clear that the working class will not risk our lives again to satisfy the greed of capital. Their sources of wealth are also their limits, and we do not want to accept the criminal blackmail of choosing between the precariousness of being fired or death in the middle of a storm.
Political negligence, however, does not stop here. The degree of mortality of climate denialism in the Valencian Community should not be read only in terms of the effects of the dominance of the economic imperative of companies, it must be put in relation to the adoption of reactionary views towards the ecological crisis of the PPCV that have nourished apathy and austerity orientations, making cuts to essential public services and emergency response as their political practice.
Shrinking the public sector, outsourcing and privatising are neoliberal responses to crises that expose us to greater vulnerability. Its application means cuts in access to basic rights for sustaining life – such as health, education, food, treatment, housing…– and implies a growing commercialisation of the structures of common welfare, and which under denialist coordinates occur as the ideal framework to dismantle the Valencian Emergency Unit and suppress the Valencian Climate Change Agency as soon as they come to power. These two fundamental bodies in times of climate emergency that could play a key role in leading prevention, adaptation and mitigation policies in the territory – if they had been provided with the necessary budget and competences – and to design responses that would allow the emergency brake to be applied and that with the passage of DANA, we would find ourselves less exposed, less vulnerable to their effects. Therefore, the political responsibilities – and perhaps we should also say criminal responsibilities – of this disaster do not begin on October 28: they begin at the moment that the spaces designed to face the challenges of the ecological crisis are dismantled and proudly boasted about.
Making Class Conflict An Ecosocialist Policy
While in the streets of Paiporta, Chiva, Catarroja, Massanassa, Algemesí and many other towns affected by the DANA, people mourn the catastrophe by cleaning, caring and helping where the emergency services cannot reach, we need the pain and anger that is accumulating to be channelled into conflict. Let it take shape, as it did on the 9th of this month, in the mobilisation and organisation of a people that is not content with grief or silence in the face of lives, times, houses and territories that have been cut up and taken away.
We cannot allow ourselves to call the series of conscious decisions that have led to the deaths of hundreds of people and that make climate barbarism a business, a mistake. We cannot allow the disaster to silence and depoliticise the class conflict that lies at the root of the problems that the Valencian Country is suffering today. Because as the days and weeks go by, reactionary and far-right voices permeate everything with fake news, hate speech and disembodied racism. The doors are increasingly opening to a disastrous nationalism that creates more and more obstacles to understanding the DANA and its impacts as a result of political decisions that have led us to a scenario of ecological crisis, whilst making conspiracies more credible in the face of such a large and destructive disaster. As Richard Seymour points out, from these coordinates the ecological disaster is transformed into a disaster created by human malice and the climate crisis becomes fertile ground from which to fuel hatred, normalize thuggish practices and champion patriotic punitive populisms that move the focus of the debate towards the stigma and criminalization of the migrant population.
Given this scenario, what tools do we have to stop the monster machine and articulate responses that break with the reactionary idea that only within the margins of capital can we survive the turbulence of the ecological crisis? Aware of the magnitude of the challenge that arises from these questions, for us, a key piece in drawing up the answer is the construction of a popular eco-socialist bloc that brings together different sectors of the population – from neighbours on the front line of the disaster in the networks of mutual support, stable spaces for union, environmentalist, feminist, LGBTIQA+, anti-racist and housing struggle work, and political organisations of the radical left – and which is capable of proposing an alternative to the reactionary and denialist policies that govern us. A meeting space that breaks with the fragmentation of struggles and overcomes the sectoral nature of the fight against climate change, that connects the different aspects of the ecological crisis of capital, and that from its diverse practices configures a model of universal and collective management for a dignified life, in accordance with the limits and natural resources available to us.
The neighbourhood networks and community spaces that are at the centre of the response to the impacts of the DANA these days, and the expressions of popular solidarity with those affected that have been sweeping through towns and neighbourhoods in the Valencian Country and throughout Spain these weeks, are and must be the spearhead for the construction of this popular eco-socialist bloc. It is from these spaces, from these common places, where the foundations of the eco-socialist and class horizon for which we fight will emerge from the mud.
12 November 2024
Joana Bregolat, ecofeminist activist and militant of Anticapitalistas
Article first published in Inprecor magazine n°727, December 2024.
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La Dana is a Spanish acronym for "high-altitude isolated depression" and refers to a weather phenomenon that can cause flash floods, hail, and tornadoes. DANAs occur when cold air moves over warm Mediterranean waters, causing the air to rise and form dense clouds that can remain over an area for hours.