Eduardo González
Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares announced on Tuesday the repatriation of another group of 59 Spaniards from Venezuela following the double earthquake of June 24th. He admitted that, although the search for survivors continues in the rubble, “so many days have passed that it’s starting to get difficult.”
In statements to the program ‘Las Mañanas’ on Radio Nacional de España, Albares reported that a new repatriation flight with Spaniards is arriving on Tuesday. “It will bring Spaniards and people of other nationalities, Europeans and Venezuelans as well; 78 people are expected to arrive at Barajas Airport today. There will be 59 Spaniards, in addition to Venezuelans, Portuguese, Italians, Belgians, French, and people from the United Kingdom,” he specified.
According to the minister, Spain has been present in Venezuela for the past three days through the START (Spanish Technical Aid Response Team) field hospital of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), which is “absolutely vital at this time” and is “treating an average of 200 people daily across all medical specialties, as well as providing psychological and surgical support.”
“Our rescuers are on the ground until the very last minute with the rescue dogs,” he continued, referring to the Military Emergency Unit (UME) of the Ministry of Defense and the firefighters of the Emergency and Immediate Response Team of the Community of Madrid (ERICAM). “And of course, our Embassy and Consulate, as well as the crisis unit here in the Ministry’s central buildings, are operational for all Spaniards,” he added.
“We are certainly analyzing the needs in this new phase of reconstruction so that Spain can maintain a presence, albeit a very incipient one,” he concluded. “They are still trying to find anyone alive, although obviously so many days have passed that it is becoming difficult, but as long as there is hope, these search efforts will continue,” he added.
At the moment, the death toll from the double earthquake of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 on the Richter scale, which struck northern Chile on June 24 with a forty-second interval, is more than 3,500, according to the latest official figures, and around 50,000 remain missing, according to unconfirmed sources from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. In the case of Spaniards, the latest figures are 35 dead, 139 missing, and eleven people trapped under the rubble.