Environment and agriculture minister Vicenç Vidal insisted yesterday that the government is on the side of the farmers who have been hit by drought and now floods. "No one doubts that there has been damage," he said, noting that the farmers are unhappy because Madrid appears "to have forgotten the needs of agriculture" and adding that state aid has formulas which mean that almost no farmer can be compensated.
Vidal said that greatest concern is for cereal and potato crops, explaining that two periods of intense rain had caused considerable damage because they were so close together and that the land had been unable to cope. The floods were as a result, he conceded, of inadequate maintenance of roads, ditches and other infrastructure.
The minister said that the first field inspections have been made and that assessments must be made according to technical criteria. "We can't make an evaluation just by throwing the dice." On a tractor protest against the ministry's policies, he believed that it was positive if a farming organisation calls its members to a meeting prior to the gathering of the Farming Council (which is today), but wondered whether the Asaja agricultural business association wants to have a role in a political setting or as an agricultural entity.
Regarding floods in Sant Jordi (Palma), he believed that residents there were victims of urbanisation that hadn't taken into account where it had been constructed; a reference to the water table, which when it rises, will cause a flood.
On a demand from Muro town hall that the government should clean the beach of all the debris caused by the storms, the director-general for natural spaces, Miquel Mir, said that the government is willing to do so and will provide personnel and technical means. He observed that such a task is really one for the municipality and that much of what was dumped on the beach was "not natural" and had nothing to with the torrents. These, from an environmental point, were clean, he maintained.