Mud boots of empathy in Spain
A flood of goodwill from volunteers after a historic rainstorm shows that a society can bond in affection beyond sharp political divisions.
Volunteers and residents remove mud after floods in Paiporta, Valencia, Spain, Nov. 5.
AP
A nation polarized by politics is having a clarifying moment. A week after an intense storm battered its eastern coast, Spain has seen thousands of volunteers come from all directions to help towns devastated by floods. Many traveled miles by bicycle or on foot.
“Humanity is still capable of forgetting its differences,” said Toni Zamorano, who spent hours on the roof of his submerged car in the town of Sedaví. “Here, race or economic level don’t matter. This solidarity makes you feel great,” he told The New York Times.
Political differences in Spain bore little relation to the unity felt by ordinary citizens during the disaster. That may be because most Spanish citizens rally around priorities such as dealing with the effects of climate change, according to Miriam Gonzalez and Begoña Lucena, founders of España Mejor, a civil society group. “Polarization is a major distraction,” they stated in the European Business Review last year.
The storm’s impact brought a visit by King Felipe VI on Sunday to the city of Paiporta, where floods had swept away thousands of homes and businesses. Some residents pelted him and his entourage with mud and insults out of anger over the government’s slow response to the disaster.
In an address a few days earlier, the king spoke of the need to build coherent societies based on dialogue and concern for the common good. “It is ... the obligation of institutions, but also [of citizens], to fight against everything that separates, even one iota, from that integral respect that we owe to the person, to any person, to the dignity of any human being,” he said.
In Paiporta, the king showed what that can look like in practice. His security detail begged him three times to leave the throng. He and Queen Letizia stayed. They listened, hugged, and wept with residents. Anger softened. In a poll published Tuesday in the online newspaper El Español, the townspeople expressed their gratitude for the monarchs’ visit. They acknowledged the risk they had taken to be there. Back in Madrid, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón said his government should have done more sooner.
Spain’s unity at this moment is from the bottom up. Or, as Spanish professional soccer player Ferran Torres wrote on social media, “The people are the ones who save the people. ... Long live Spain.”