Sagunto council backs Venezuela unanimously after June earthquake
Sagunto city council unanimously approved, at Thursday's August plenary session, an institutional declaration of solidarity with Venezuela and with residents of Venezuelan origin living in the town, following the earthquakes of 24 June.
Sagunto's city council unanimously approved, at its ordinary August plenary session on Thursday, an institutional declaration of support and solidarity with the Venezuelan people following the double earthquake of 24 June. The text argues for decentralised cooperation and municipalism as tools of solidarity between cities, and calls on local administrations to help with the country's recovery.
The document expresses the council's closeness to the injured, to those who lost their homes or livelihoods, and to the population affected by the disaster as a whole. That support is explicitly extended to the Venezuelan community living in Sagunto and across Spain, a group that, according to the declaration, is experiencing the situation with particular anguish given the uncertainty facing their relatives and places of origin.
The plenary session also recognised the work of emergency teams, civil protection staff, healthcare workers, humanitarian organisations, volunteers, associations, fraternities, social entities and private individuals who are assisting victims and channelling aid to Venezuela.
Thursday's decision follows an earlier gesture: on 29 June the council held a minute of silence at noon in memory of the victims, joining a call agreed unanimously by the board of spokespersons of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP), which many other city councils, provincial councils and island councils across Spain also joined. FEMP, founded in 1981, today groups together more than 7,400 local entities nationwide, which explains the nationwide reach of that call for silence.
According to the latest known figures, the disaster in Venezuela has left around 3,811 dead, 16,740 injured and an as-yet undetermined number of missing people, alongside close to 59,000 damaged buildings. Seismological studies have established that, technically, it was not a single movement but a "doublet earthquake": two consecutive tremors, of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 Mw, separated by only 29 seconds, which worsened the impact on infrastructure.
The declaration also recalls the historical, cultural and human ties between Spain and Venezuela, noting the sizeable Venezuelan community spread across many Spanish municipalities, Sagunto among them.
According to Ajuntament de Sagunt (Sagunto City Council) — Actualidad, with additional background from Wikipedia on the Venezuela earthquake and the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces.