Did Spain's government use a false helicopter crash tweet to distract from the Valencia floods?

Spain's leading news agency EFE has been under fire over the past week for accidentally publishing misinformation on two separate occasions.

Transcript

00:00Did Spain use a false helicopter crash tweet to distract from the Valencia floods?

00:08Spain's deadly floods are fertile ground for false information,

00:12and this time the country's leading news agency EFE is at its center.

00:17It all began when EFE published a breaking news alert on X,

00:20saying that a helicopter had crashed into Madrid's iconic Torre de Cristal or glass tower.

00:26The agency deleted the post three minutes later,

00:28but not after it had been seen by thousands of people and shared across social media.

00:33EFE quickly admitted to the error, explaining that a technical issue caused the post to

00:37accidentally go out as part of a training exercise for students at the agency.

00:41Its president, Miguel Ángel Oliver, said the same,

00:45adding that there was no excuse for the error and that he took full responsibility.

00:49Nevertheless, conspiracy theories soon erupted online,

00:52claiming that the government encouraged EFE to put out the tweet to distract

00:56from its handling of the flooding in Valencia and elsewhere.

00:59Some social media users pointed to Oliver's links to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

01:04He previously served as his Secretary of State for Communication between 2018 and 2021.

01:10Nevertheless, there's no evidence that the conspiracy theories are true.

01:13Euroverify reached out to EFE, which reiterated its previous explanation for the helicopter post.

01:19The government has not responded to our requests for information as of the time of this fact check.

01:24The more likely explanation is that the conspiracy theories came about as part of

01:28the anger against the central and regional governments for their perceived inaction to

01:32the floods, which have claimed more than 220 lives.

01:36Carlos Matón, the conservative president of the Valencian community, has been slammed for

01:41having lunch with a journalist when the floods hit, rather than focusing on the response to the crisis.

01:46Sánchez, meanwhile, has faced harsh criticism for not invoking a national

01:50state of emergency to wrest control of the situation from local authorities.