• MARTA BELVER / FERNANDO LÁZARO

    Madrid

Tuesday, 19 January 2021 - 18:58

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    The Government declares Madrid a catastrophic zone but believes that Almeida's damage calculation is "off track"

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    Serious disagreement between Fernando Grande-Marlaska and the Community of Madrid due to the withdrawal of the UME

The Ministry of the Interior deactivated the Military Emergency Unit (UME) of the Community of Madrid on Sunday night, 12 hours before the Government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso lowered the Winter Inclement Plan activated by the arrival of the storm Filomena to the region.

This is stated in an email dated January 17 - to which EL MUNDO has had access - in which a technician from the General Directorate of Civil Protection and Emergencies, dependent on the department of Fernando Grande-Marlaska, reports that the request of the "cessation of intervention" had been sent to the Ministry of Defense

at 9:37 pm that Sunday

.

Interior, however, issued a statement on January 18 in which it argued that the Madrid authorities, "within the scope of their powers", had decided on Monday morning to "de-escalate their Emergency Plan, going from level 2 to alert level 1 ”.

"This means that

the Community of Madrid decides not to use state resources

, including those of the UME, for recovery work after the storm and the cold wave," the Ministry's letter added literally.

Apart from the fact that the UME had already been deactivated the day before by the Government of Spain, the Madrid Executive states that this process took place

"in a consensual way, not unilaterally"

, after the General Directorate of Civil Emergency Protection - attached to the Ministry of the Interior - would have proposed its "withdrawal" on Friday, January 15.

From the Puerta del Sol they also assure that they asked for two days of margin to make sure that

no city council in the region needed the help of Defense personnel

and that, after confirming that the last request had been made on Saturday at five In the afternoon by the Carabaña consistory, on Sunday night they notified the Interior that said withdrawal was already feasible.

Subsequently, the aforementioned email was sent from the Directorate General for Civil Protection, confirming the "cessation of intervention".

"It is a fictitious controversy

that the only thing it intends to do is to question and torpedo the management coordinated by the Community of all the administrations, which have worked side by side," explains a spokesman for the Community Ministry of Justice and Interior from Madrid.

"The Federation of Municipalities itself told us on Monday that all city councils already had the capacity to carry out emergency management with their means," he adds.

The activation of the UME on the night of January 8, when the snow began to collapse on Madrid's roads, had already caused a disagreement between Marlaska and the Minister of Defense.

Margarita Robles responded almost immediately to the request of the mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, for the Army to collaborate in the emergency caused by the storm, when Marlaska's position was that the capital had to have previously made a request through the Community of Madrid to the Ministry of the Interior and the latter authorize it, according to this newspaper.

Since then and until this Sunday, the

350 members of the UME

have collaborated in the recovery efforts of the region after the passage of

Filomena

together with the Fire Department of the Community of Madrid, the autonomous Civil Protection service and the forest checkpoints.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Fernando Grande-Marlaska

  • Isabel Diaz Ayuso

  • Margaret Robles

  • Madrid

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Politics Fernando Grande-Marlaska, irritated with Margarita Robles for deploying the UME in Madrid without going through Interior

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