The Balearic opposition PSIB-PSOE party will ask in Parliament where the director general of Emergencies was on Sunday, when the islands were battered by the storm, and how many times he and the Minister of the Presidency and Public Administrations, Antonia Maria Estarellas, were at the meetings of the technical monitoring committee.
At a press conference, the spokesman for the Socialist Parliamentary Group, Iago Negueruela, denounced the “chaotic management” of the storm by the government, “which has left significant material damage, two people, a father and son, missing in the waters off Minorca, and thousands of people still unable to return to their homes”.
All of this, he lamented, “while the government was absent for almost the whole of Sunday”, despite the fact that the region was “hit by one of the worst storms in recent years”.
“The absence of the Minister of the Presidency and Public Administrations, the Director General of Emergencies and the President of the Government herself, Marga Prohens, for almost the entire day, until we Socialists raised the matter, says a lot,” he stressed.
He argued that “the government should have listened more to scientists and less to Vox, and should have been where it should have been”.
However, he added, “this was not the case”.
“Until we Socialists denounced these absences, the Minister of the Presidency and Public Administrations did not show her face”, he reiterated, and lamented how the president Margalida Prohens “remained in Galicia, where she went to a campaign event, for the complicated investiture of the president of the national PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, when her place was with her people, in charge of the management of the Balearics”.
He also asked “where the Director General of Emergencies was on Sunday morning, the day of the storm” and “how many times both she and the minister were at the meetings of the technical monitoring committee”.
In order to clarify this, he announced that the Socialist Parliamentary Group will register a series of questions in Parliament.
Negueruela, accompanied by the deputy spokesman of the Socialist Group, Marc Pons, said he “regrets what happened” because, in his opinion, “the government’s absences are not justified”, and thanked the security forces for their work.