Power Outage: Xàbia’s government team criticised for silence during emergency

This morning, Xàbia mayor Rosa Cardona released a statement outlining the actions taken by her government team during the national emergency which saw much of Spain suffer a massive power outage during Monday afternoon and evening. It was a statement that has been met with much criticism from both local opposition parties and the media.

Power was restored just before midnight but the local government in Xàbia didn’t issue a statement on its social media platforms until 8.30am Tuesday morning. By comparison, according to La Marina Plaza, other local administrations, such as Dénia, Calp, Teulada and Poble Nou de Benitatxell were able to inform their populations by other means throughout the emergency.

Former mayor José Chulvi, representative of the socialist party PSOE-PSPV in Xàbia, issued his own statement at just after 8.00am Tuesday morning, criticizing the lack of communication of the government team to its citizens, highlighting the fact that when the Generalitat Valenciana issued its state of emergency on Monday evening, it required that municipal officials inform residents of their municipality “through all available means”.

Whilst accepting that communication was difficult during Monday afternoon and evening due to the lack of internet access, La Marina Plaza reported that some municipalities “used their imagination”, highlighting that the local council in Poble Nou de Benitatxell deployed local police units to inform its residents via a PA system that the outage was likely to last for some time. Even with the communication difficulties, it said, other municipalities were able to send out messages, albeit erratically, in an attempt to keep their residents updated on the situation.

La Marina Plaza also expressed its surprise that the local council in Xàbia remained silent once power was restored at around 23:30 on Monday evening, whilst the administration in Dénia had announced that the power was back and confirmed information about the situation of schools, which were due to re-open on Tuesday morning after the Easter break.

A statement was finally posted on the town hall’s social media platforms at 8.30am but, argues La Marina Plaza, it came some 30 minutes after the statement issued by the socialists. And it concluded with a claim that the local government team in Xàbia has form in failing to communicate to its residents during an emergency, highlighting the fact that it took seven hours for it to make a statement on the serious inferno that engulfed a large part of the valley in April 2024, a incident that forced the evacuation of dozens of people and the closure of the Gata road, the main access into the town.