The Diplomat
The Spanish public treasury has been forced to spend up to 188,000 dollars (almost 154,400 euros) to repair the serious damage suffered by the Spanish Embassy in Washington at the beginning of last April due to a flood.
This was announced by the Council of Ministers, which yesterday approved an agreement by which it takes note of the declaration of emergency for the contracting of the repair works of the facilities affected by the flooding of the Embassy.
The events occurred last April 4, when the main water supply pipe, belonging to the water distribution company of Washington DC, DC WATER, broke at the corner of Pennsylvania Ave. and 24th St. NW, precisely where the Embassy is located.
The break caused water to back up in the roadway, reaching a level above the PEPCO water supply manhole, through which water flowed into the Embassy’s electrical supply room. As a result, the electrical room and parking lots were flooded. The water level in the electrical room, which reached 91 centimeters, caused damage to the equipment located there and to dependent facilities, which are not operational.
The emergency procedure was triggered by the inoperability of all these installations, which makes it impossible to carry out normal work activities at the Embassy, not only due to the absence of air conditioning and lifting equipment, but also because it endangers the presence of any personnel, since the fire protection system, among other installations, is not operational. Due to the current situation of the building, the minimum safety conditions are not guaranteed, so it was necessary to carry out repair work on these facilities.
To remedy this situation, it was proposed to replace the three faulty transformers, the foul water extraction pumps, the control panel of the fire protection system and repair the cooling system of the electrical supply room. In view of this situation, on April 16, the works contracting file was declared an emergency. The maximum estimated amount is US$188,000 for the repair of the facilities affected by the flooding.
To date, the biggest problems at the Spanish Legation in Washington had been at the Ambassador Residence, designed by architect Rafael Moneo and inaugurated in 2004 by former President José María Aznar. The building, which cost 8.7 million euros to the public purse, registered such a number of deficiencies that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a resolution in 2013 obliging Moneo to pay compensation of two million euros for damages resulting from the remodeling work on the residence. Finally, the National Court annulled this resolution in 2016 because it had exceeded, “by far”, the five-year term that Foreign Affairs had to claim something from the architect. Moneo himself had recognized that the building had construction “problems”.
