Dawn

Dawn

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

09.30: Second post of the day . . .

The Spanish are said to be prone to conspiracy thinking, though the cock-up school might actually make more sense to those accustomed to higher levels of efficiency.

In the case of the fires currently devastating great swathes of Galicia, responsibility is variously attributed to crazy pyromaniacs, careless tourists, avaricious property developers, pasture-hungry and/or land-abandoning peasants, feuding neighbours, piecework-seeking current fire-fighters and even ‘spiteful’ ex-fire-fighters seeking revenge for not being re-contracted. No one is more assiduous in pointing the finger of blame at conspiring criminals than the regional and local governments. If these are to be believed, there’s a new type of pyromaniac abroad – one willing to work in a group that is starting coordinated and hard-to-deal-with fires on wooded escarpments close to villages and towns, with a view to forcing the fire-fighters to concentrate on dealing with the threat to life and so giving the pyromaniacs a free hand out in the countryside.

I, for one, don’t buy this simple [and convenient] explanation. We’ve had had a couple of very dry years and the winds have been strong for several days now. This, I believe, is a more logical explanation for the fires which have spread rapidly in what the local Mayor prefers to see as “a suspiciously straight line” down from their mountain origin to the city of Pontevedra by the sea.

And now we learn of something which might just explain the smokescreen being erected by the politicians. Or perhaps I, too, am falling prey to conspiracy thinking. The regional government is a coalition between Socialists and ‘Nationalists’. The latter have never had more than a small following and actually lost votes at the last election. However, their support is vital to the ruling Socialist party and, as I have said, the rabid Nationalist tail has been wagging the Socialist dog for some time now. Most relevantly, it seems that earlier this year the regional government dictated that only those fire-fighters who spoke perfect Galician would have their contracts renewed. Inevitably, this led to the loss of experienced firemen and, perhaps even more importantly, of experienced managers.

If this is true, it is a truly appalling example of the madness which follows from the doctrinaire promotion of a regional language over a national language. And it leaves one asking whether the government will give a dispensation to the members of the army and fire-fighting forces now being drafted into Galicia from elsewhere in Spain to help it deal with its latest ecological disaster. A dispensation, of course, which they weren’t willing to give to their own citizens.

If not, I wonder how the team of expert fire analysts being sent from Madrid is going to do its work. Perhaps a layer of dual-language translators will be interposed between two groups which both speak perfect Spanish. Frankly, I wouldn’t put it past them. Though they might not be able to find enough translators in August.

And, if I’d had my house destroyed or lost a family member, I’d be wondering again whether Spain couldn’t do with a few more campaigning [or even greedy] lawyers to lead a class action for negligence against posturing politicians who place more importance on Galicia’s distant history than on its near future.

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