Far-right agitators were quick to blame the floods on the government for destroying dams, a common way of minimising the climate emergency.
An event as brutal as the flood that devastated the Valencian Community on Tuesday night always generates two uncomfortable phenomena on the networks: misinformation and political strife. On the one hand, malicious people begin to spread hoaxes that “cause public order problems” , as denounced by the chief inspector of the Valencia Fire Department.
On the other hand, the most opportunistic users try to turn the tables on themselves or, rather, throw it in the face of the opposing side. People on the left blamed the Valencian president, Carlos Mazón, for eliminating the Valencian Emergency Unit , which was only a piece of paper when he suspended its implementation: the body was created in February 2023, by Ximo Puig, but it never came to work.
While many used the networks to ask for help or to provide public service in an exemplary manner, the loudest ones were carried away by the polarization. An exchange of tweets in response to a message from Mazón sums up what happened on the networks in the first hours.
“What an idea to remove the Valencian Emergency Unit, eh champion,” said one user to the president. And she was answered: “What an idea to remove dams, eh champion?” Official message followed by political bashing.
The far-right agitators had a clear target: the dams. And a hero: Francisco Franco. Since it became evident that the damage would have serious consequences, the usual reactionary disinformation accounts pointed to the culprit: the hundreds of dams built by the dictator to protect the population had been demolished “by the current regime with the environmental excuse,” according to the
ultra-right hoax account Captain Bitcoin .
And he added, summing up the argument: “We are a leading country in this madness [demolishing dams]. But now they will say that the deaths and destruction are due to climate change. Scum.”
Demolishing dams had nothing to do with it, but one of the first to denounce this culpability at midnight on Tuesday to Wednesday was Samuel Vázquez, Interior spokesman for Vox, with a “damn scoundrels” and a screenshot of a news item from Rtve.es from 2022 that said: “Spain has become a benchmark in the demolition of dams.”
“Bad-born people who boast of demolishing dams and reservoirs that would have served to alleviate the consequences of this catastrophe,” said Vito Quiles , a provocateur of politicians in Congress. “Agenda 20230 kills,” accused another far-right account and one called Captain Spain accused: “This happens when the government destroys our dams that were built just to avoid these disasters.
” The networks are full of messages in this direction: “murderous laws”, “you will pay”, “the dead weigh on your soul”… Screenshots of news about dams could be recycled: it is a common claim to blame the lack of reservoirs for the effects of climate change, in order to minimize the crisis.
Websites in this far-right sphere, such as La Gaceta , La Bandera , El Debate or Mediterráneo Digital , have published several topics following the wake of the agitators. But what was most successful was a map, shared by the DerFekka account , with this text: “Fifty-one dead in Valencia, and the left has nothing to do with it? I was thinking this morning, surprised, until I saw the map of Chimo Puig’s plan to demolish dams for the Valencian Community.
” The same map was later shared by agitators such as the MEP Alvise Pérez (“they have destroyed barriers that were precisely preventing the disaster we have suffered”), as if it were definitive proof of the socialist crime, since a few points can be seen over the provinces affected by the flood and the legend “river restoration actions.”
The first thing is that the map is not Puig’s, but that of the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation (CHJ), an autonomous body of the Ministry for Ecological Transition. But the most striking thing is that the supposed smoking gun is quite the opposite: looking closely at the map, it is clear that there have only been three demolitions in Valencia in the last two decades and they are dams, small barriers of a few meters (most less than 2) to divert channels.
Consulted by EL PAÍS, the ministry specifies: the Molí de Malanya dam , in Bellús (Valencia), demolished in 2022 by the CHJ; the Corindón dam in 2017 (in the Turia riverbed), with a height of 1.50 metres; and four dams in the L’Algoder ravine, demolished in 2006.
The last two cases were not even destroyed by the Government, but were “demolished by the concessionaires, due to the termination of the concession or by sanctioners”. None of the three affect the area of this week’s floods and they were removed because they also pose a risk “during floods or floods because their virulence increases”, according to Transición Ecológica.
But false and deliberately misleading figures have circulated unchecked, turning the hundreds of weirs removed across Spain in recent decades into Valencian dams.
No dams have been demolished in the Valencian Community recently, but a tweet detailing (falsely) the four dams destroyed by the government has gained a lot of visibility, even after its creator deleted it, as a screenshot on other networks.
Francoism embalmed
“It’s not a miracle, it’s Saint Francis Franco with excavators and lots of concrete,” celebrated one account on X. “The best ruler Spain has ever had and will ever have. If Valencia isn’t a lagoon today it’s because of this plan,” said another about the dictator. “The ‘miracle’ is called Franco,” reiterated user Arturo Villa , before describing how the tyrant decided to divert the Turia to avoid floods like the one that devastated Valencia in 1957.
In the X and Telegram accounts of the extreme right, such as that of the agitator Bertrand Ndongo , the episode of the No-Do that celebrated the visit of the “Generalísimo” to the city after the great flood of that year, which killed 87 people, has been rescued from the RTVE archives.
They forget an important detail: Franco dismissed the Valencian mayor, Tomás Trénor Azcárraga, in 1958, because he denounced that the aid never arrived, and whose criticisms expedited the plan that diverted the river.
But all that doesn’t matter: the broad-brush memes were already proliferating. Franco is depicted as a genius, a great statesman, in contrast to the current rulers. These memes pit the security and planning of “the ‘evil’ dictatorship” against the current disaster caused by “the ‘sacrosanct’ democracy”, in a reactionary insinuation that is not at all veiled.
The summary is simple: it is Pedro Sánchez’s government’s fault, climate change has nothing to do with it and we lived better under Franco.
The dictator has even been vindicated by Iker Jiménez , a Mediaset presenter, in one of his improvised YouTube live broadcasts: “Then they said why Franco made so many reservoirs, well thank goodness.” One of Jiménez’s regular commentators on his programmes, full of misinformation, is Colonel Pedro Baños, who also has his own channel on video platforms.
Last night he had as a guest Pilar Esquinas, who presents herself as an expert in Water Law, but is the usual spokesperson for hoaxes about reservoirs. Now, on her Telegram, Esquinas suggests that the disaster was caused by Morocco through a HAARP programme, a sophisticated geoengineering system to manipulate the weather. Because misinformation, with a few actors, never stops inventing, recycling and feeding back.
