“Right now everything is chaos and we don’t even have a place to sleep, but we are getting there; the important thing is the help and we are used to sleeping in the vans”; said Óscar Peláez, the secretary of The association Inca Mallorca Solidaria; one of the organisations that has been racing against the clock for forty-eight hours to prepare a humanitarian convoy that arrived in Valencia today unloading tons of basic necessities.
Its president, Antonia Triguero, returned from a delivery in Ukraine less than a week ago. The catastrophe caught her on the return trip and in a matter of minutes, she had already launched another collection campaign. In 48 hours, the “inquers” with the help of volunteers from all over the island and the support of a multitude of municipalities that have carried out other collection actions, have managed to collect 105,000 kilos of material, including work and outdoor cleaning utensils, personal hygiene products, food and a large shipment of mattresses, beds, sheets and blankets donated by several hotels.
The material is directed to the people to whom it has been more difficult to get the aid; among them, the most affected by the tragic storm that devastated the Valencian Community last Tuesday. Part of the load, already has a destination; for example, the six tons of food that will be unloaded in the mobile kitchen of Julio Botarga, a cook who already made similar actions in Lesbos, located in the school of Paiporta, where he is cooking daily for five hundred people. Another large part of the material, two entire vans, will be delivered to two animal shelters in Valencia, as there are dozens of pets that have been rescued and require specific care; many of them are still separated from their owners.
The group, of sixty people, will be divided to work better and more efficiently; carrying out two operations in each of the villages to which they have access. In the first operation, the necessary humanitarian material will be unloaded and a review of basic needs and essential fresh products will be carried out. Once documented and assessed, the NGO will proceed to purchase the resources in Valencia city and will take them to the aid centers making a second delivery. In addition, they travel with an all-terrain vehicle that will allow them to make deliveries in places where the main roads have not yet been reestablished.
“The most difficult thing is the delivery to the right places. That all the material that is collected, that the effort of the people who have bought and brought material, that everything arrives where it has to arrive; that is our priority in management. The team will be divided into different routes and we will cover as much as possible”, explains Antonia Triguero, president of Inca Mallorca Solidaria.
Once on the ground, the team will assess the needs for a second trip in “fifteen or twenty days”. The objective is to be able to collect part of the cargo that had to be rejected in this first convoy due to lack of space and “because the needs vary, we know from experience in this type of catastrophes that, once the first interventions have been carried out, the neighbors will need to continue with the reconstruction and they will need paint, household appliances, there are many things, we are already thinking about the next campaign; this is a very big disaster and the aid must be progressive”, explains the president shortly before the last team meeting before the convoy starts the trip.
Spanish banks have offered mortgage holders, the self-employed and small businesses affected by the floods a three-month loan moratorium during which they will not have to make monthly instalments, the banking associations said. At least 217 people died and many are still unaccounted for in the worst flooding in decades in Spain.
Banks are also in contact with the state-credit agency ICO to outline other measures to help families and companies cope with the economic impact of the floods, the associations said late on Monday.
In 2020 and 2021, the government extended maturities on state-backed loans to support mid-sized companies in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also extended a freeze on loan repayments.
A year later, the Spanish government also offered mortgage relief measures to help families cope with higher borrowing costs