The Iberdrola España Foundation supports those affected by the cold drop with two community projects with the Spanish Red Cross and Betania

The CEO of Iberdrola España, Mario Ruiz-Tagle, highlighted the company's involvement in the recovery of the affected areas: ‘We mobilised our teams immediately to restore electricity supply in record time and we’re currently developing the il-lumina plan, with which we will invest €100M this year and next year to redesign the electricity grid affected, with the latest standards of resilience and digitisation. And as a sign of our commitment to the Valencia region, we are going to work with these two associations to also contribute to rebuilding the social and emotional pillars of those who have suffered most from the consequences of the cold drop’.

The partnership with the Spanish Red Cross, which amounts to €400,000, has been made possible thanks to a donation campaign carried out among Iberdrola España employees, in which the company contributed four euros for every euro donated by workers. This amount will go towards a mental health and community support project, whose main objective is to improve emotional well-being, reduce the impact of the psychological suffering undergone, and strengthen coping mechanisms, to recover and rebuild lives in all the municipalities affected by cold drop. 

For the vice-president of the Spanish Red Cross, Rafael Gandia, the consequences of the emergency suffered from the cold drop ‘are multidimensional and, in many cases, require long-term accompaniment. So in the Spanish Red Cross response plan to the effects of the cold drop, one of the key areas of work is psychological and community support: not only is it essential to immediately cope with an event with such tragic consequences, but it’s also essential for long-term sustained work. Material and physical recovery must go hand in hand with emotional recovery’. 

With regard to Betania, financial aid amounting to €334.334,000 for the 'Emergency 365' project for families affected by the cold drop will be distributed in the towns of Alfafar, Algemesí, Benetússer, Catarroja, El Saler, Massanassa, Paiporta, Picanya, Torrent and Utiel, seeking to respond to the severe deterioration of the situation in those municipalities and to help families and children overcome the crisis by providing direct emergency aid to meet the immediate and priority structural, physical and social needs of the people affected.

This association also benefited from €40,000 in financial aid to enable 130 children, aged 3 to 16, to attend a day camp at the Castellar-Oliveral primary school in Valencia and another overnight camp at Iberdrola España's facilities in Cortes de Pallás during Easter Week. The organisation helped both groups manage the emotional and psychological stress derived from the cold drop through personalised accompaniment, with the help of comprehensive and specialised care during non-school hours, as well as offering logistics support for working families.

Begoña Arana, director of Betania, stressed that with the project ‘we want to help families to cover their most immediate needs, giving them the basis to restructure their lives and begin to rebuild their future and their present after having overcome such a traumatic situation. The structural and social emergencies of the affected families will be covered and each applicant’s situation of vulnerability will be assessed to ensure that the aid reaches those who really need it, optimising the resources available to us’.