“Desperate,” repeats the mayor of Catarroja, the socialist Lorena Silvent, as she recounts her difficulties in spending the 220 million euros that the City Council of the Valencian town has received from the Government to alleviate the effects of the DANA catastrophe of October 29, 2024, and which generate two million euros in interest per year. This 43-year-old former tax advisor acknowledges the “great investment effort” of the central Executive “which is leading the reconstruction,” but demands greater speed and fewer procedures, while lamenting the obstacles from high-ranking municipal officials in signing projects that slow down the works. Catarroja (30,600 inhabitants) was one of the municipalities most damaged by the floods that claimed 230 lives (25 in the town) in the province of Valencia, and which will be a year and a half old soon.
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Question. How is the town of Catarroja?
Answer. We are in the phase of planning these recovery works because the impact affects the entire municipality, and we are planning the Catarroja of the future. We are suffering from a lack of planning both in the metropolitan area and in the growth of our towns. For example, the entire sewage system needs to be changed because it was already in poor condition, and the DANA finished it off.
Q. And why hasn’t that work started?
A. The Government of Spain is leading the reconstruction. Such an effort has never been made before. But they have transferred the management to us without a professional structure to deal with it. And having to follow a contractual procedure as rigid as that of an ordinary situation, we have the DANA funds, 220 million, 138 from the Ministry of Territorial Policy and 70 from Ecological Transition for the sewage system, among other items, but we cannot start the works. In the next torrential rains, it will collapse again, and water will flow into the streets.
Q. And you can’t use the funds?
A. That money is in a bank account generating interest, two million in about a year. We cannot enable it to buy supplies or for current expenses. First, there must be a report, like an audit, it has to be validated, corrected, sent again, and once validated, an ordinary contracting procedure must begin with a preliminary project, which then has to be put out to tender… It’s desperate.
Q. What is the execution level of those 220 million?
A. Right now, in terms of work, it won’t even reach 1%, apart from the initial cleaning works and the urgent action in the most critical points of one million euros that we did with our own funds.
Q. The government’s DANA commissioner, Zulema Pérez, insists that measures have been put in place for hiring personnel, streamlining procedures through the public company Tragsa, and extending deadlines.
A. The staff increases have not reached us, and Tragsa is a public company that has the same control mechanisms. We are doing everything with Tragsa, but the procedures are not streamlined due to the bureaucratic process. And it is also subject to controls that slow down the process.
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Q. What do you propose?
A. The same as at the beginning of the DANA with the infrastructures. It is decided which projects the City Council keeps and which the State executes, as it has the muscle, professionals, and technicians. That’s what the Ministry of Transport and the Department of Infrastructure did: we ceded the bridges, the tunnels to them, and they fixed them, and we didn’t even notice. There was a very important first phase of diagnosis, of mobilizing resources. We already have that. What I ask is that each city council be evaluated according to its level of impact. This will take a long time, and we are talking about changing our territory for the better. What we need is more personalized attention.
Q. One might think you are neglecting your duties as mayor, right? City councils can declare emergency works, and the contracts law also allows it. Other affected councils, like Algemesí, are doing so.
A. With the shield of municipal autonomy, we are disguising a solution that is not real because a city council understands above all the needs and concerns of its residents. And in the municipal contracting body, the interpretation is left to the national officials [municipal secretary, comptroller, and treasurer]. And these officials often do not sign, after the judicialization of mask purchases during the pandemic. The emergency was super evident, but now all those purchases are being audited, not only by the Court of Accounts. What my officials tell me is that the contracts law interprets what is understood by emergency in a restrictive way. In some city councils, on the contrary, their officials say that everything that involves cleaning, recovering, and rehabilitating is urgent and they go ahead.
Q. And how has the Generalitat acted?
A. It has been somewhat inactive. Now we are in a new phase with the mixed commission with the Government, and we see a willingness to join forces from everyone. But it is not taking on major infrastructures in competencies such as sports, for example, which would facilitate our work. We also have a public institute, Berenguer Dalmau, which has been completely demolished, and the students are in prefabricated classrooms. In contrast, the construction of the Laboral offices, which depend on another department, not Education, was done by emergency procedure. We need to think more about people.
Q. And what do people on the street tell you?
A. People ask for explanations. They don’t understand. They see that you are working, but their patience runs out. They are already fighting with their homeowners’ association, with their insurance, with the administration, with the elevator… We try to explain all the reconstruction projects to inspire hope because we are building the Catarroja of the future, we are going to improve infrastructure, but all of that is slow.