The eruption of the La Palma volcano in September 2021 and the earthquake that shook Lorca 10 years earlier left a trail of destruction that has now multiplied in Valencia, Albacete and other Mediterranean provinces. The most affected area, made up of more than 70 Valencian municipalities, represents 35% of the provincial GDP and 22% of the regional wealth: about 28,000 million euros. Without knowing the balance of damages, the Generalitat has requested aid worth 31.4 billion and the Government of Spain.
Among other labor and economic measures, direct transfers are planned to repair affected homes and cars, as well as shops, companies, industrial warehouses and other work centers. While waiting to see how they land, the cases of La Palma and Lorca can provide several lessons to public administrations in management issues.
The Palm
Life changed for thousands of palmeros. A volcano opened in the center of La Palma and on the slopes of the focus. Fátima Ramos lived there, as did her mother and her brother. Three years later, Ramos has become spokesperson for the Platform of People Affected by the Volcano and confesses to having relived his own nightmare seeing the ravages of the damage in the Valencian Community. “The aid has ended up arriving,” he admits in a telephone conversation. “What happens is that it has not been fast or agile at all. There have been bureaucratic obstacles, the different administrations have not worked in a connected way. And there has been a lack of information for the population.”
The emergency lasted 85 days. This period was enough for 159 million cubic meters to cover 1,219 hectares of land—2% of the island’s surface—and buried 73.8 kilometers of roads and 2,988 buildings, including 1,345 homes. Unlike what happened in Valencia, the eruption only caused one death: a 72-year-old man who died from inhaling toxic gases while cleaning his house in the exclusion zone.
In July, the Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory – and president of the Canary Islands during the eruption -, Ángel Víctor Torres, put figures on the bill paid to date with public money: 1,046 million euros. This amount includes the 237 million that the Insurance Consortium has paid, and includes, in turn, hydraulic works, employment plans or plans for SMEs, and tax relief.
Four days after the eruption, the Kings, accompanied by President Pedro Sánchez, . His presence served the head of Government to announce the first direct aid for the purchase of personal belongings. The one who launched a “powerful package of measures”, .
The measures launched focused on housing, the issue that continues to cause anxiety among the population. The decree law compensated the total destruction of the residences, with 60,480 euros; damages that affect the structure of the habitual residence, with 41,280 euros; and the lightest damages, with 20,640 euros. To this aid we must add the initiatives launched by the Executive, which add up to just over 150 properties for rent throughout the island. Today, a dozen people still live in hotels, and another 84 in emergency solutions such as modular buildings or containers. Up to 14 of them are waiting for the Cabildo to give approval so that they can access their homes in the exclusion zone.
on a small island, whose territory is 35% protected. For this reason, the royal decree approved in 2021 included the possibility of building on rustic land. This circumstance, together with the injection of public money, has heated up the real estate market and unleashed land speculation, a circumstance that the previous Canarian Minister of Territorial Planning, José Antonio Valbuena, came to describe as “immoral.”
The 2021 royal decree also introduced a series of tax exemptions in the Real Estate Tax (IBI) and the tax on Economic Activities (IAE); a moratorium on mortgages on properties found in the buried area; and measures of an economic nature, such as a postponement and a moratorium on the payment of Social Security contributions, as well as an employment plan. Currently, people who earn their income on the island enjoy a 60% reduction in personal income tax. This measure, explains the regional Executive, began to be applied in 2023 with retroactive effect to the income of 2022 and is expected to be applied for about 10 years, although it must be negotiated year by year in the Budgets.
Last year, in addition, it included a multi-year State allocation of 100 million to compensate people for this real value of their properties. To that amount, the Government of the Canary Islands would add another 50 million annually of its own funds. The Government of the Canary Islands defends this measure as a way to restore the 600 million of private assets that were lost under the lava. “In order to carry out this, something unprecedented, we have had to develop not only the legal instruments, but also the technical procedures and criteria,” says a spokesperson for the Canary Islands Executive. “But emergency aid was not enough,” he says. “It was necessary to return [compensar] the value of what was lost so that people can fully rebuild their heritage and, with it, their lives.”
The central government paid the first of these payments last year, and the regional executive has been claiming this year’s payment for weeks. “We are on time,” official sources explain.
“I don’t know if we will recover or be able to live a life,” he laments. Therefore, his advice is clear after three years of fighting. “Be patient: desperation plays tricks. Fight for yours.”
Lorca
In the Region of Murcia, in May 2011, a double earthquake devastated the city of Lorca, the third largest by population, with about 98,500 inhabitants. The earthquakes caused the death of nine people, left more than 300 injured and affected 80% of the city’s real estate stock: some 44,000 homes suffered damage of varying degrees and 1,250 had to be demolished, explains Juan Carlos Segura, who chaired the platform. of people affected by this tragedy, now dissolved.
The Insurance Compensation Consortium paid those affected a total of 552.3 million euros, according to official data collected in its digital magazine, which indicates that almost 29,000 files were processed and that the average compensation was 19,140 euros. According to Segura, during the first year after the earthquake, minor contributions were collected for repairs in homes that did not have to be demolished, and in the following two years aid arrived for those who had to tear down their homes and raise them up. again. Royal Decree 6/2011 of May 13, 2011 articulated complementary aid to compensate families who lacked insurance or who had “underinsurance”, that is, low-amount insurance that did not cover the damage caused.
The public administrations gave these affected people some 200 million euros, which arrived much more slowly: just a month ago, around one million euros that were still pending were paid to some 150 families affected by the tragedy last year. 13 years old. For Segura, the greatest drama was experienced by the thousands of “displaced” people, who could not continue living in their homes, since aid to pay the rent for a new home began to be paid to them in August 2012, a year and three months after the earthquake.
Public funds to rebuild demolished homes took an average of six to seven years, says Segura. The first building demolished and built again took three years for the entire process. In addition to the delays in aid collections, Segura explains that there were numerous cases among those affected that delayed the reconstructions. For example, the royal decree only contemplated aid in the event that the affected home was the habitual residence, but there were numerous cases of “precarious assignees” who were left out of the aid: children who occupied a second home belonging to their parents, or elderly people who lived in their children’s second home. Another common situation was that, in a residential building, one of the owners did not have funds to carry out the reconstruction, which prevented the rest from moving forward in the process.
