The president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Carlos Mazón, has been several weeks more pending for his judicial defense strategy than of politics. The tactics of the Valencian PP leader is aimed at trying to demonstrate that it was not involved in the decision making of the Integrated Operational Coordination Center (Cecopi), located in the Emergency Building of L’Aliana on October 29, when the flood caused by a specially intense Dana caused 227 fatal victims and large destruction in several Valencian regions. To try to avoid its responsibility in the alleged negligence that the Catarroja Judge investigates tries to defend that he arrived even later to the emergency center where the worst tragedy lived in the Valencian Community was managed in the last century. The key is in article 12 of the Emergency Law, modified in 2020, which indicates: “In a catastrophic situation, the ‘President’ can assume the Single Command and the Directorate of all emergency activities, passing to its direct dependence the organizational structure of the Emergency Territorial Plan of the Valencian Community”. His defense plan also implies assuming a series of contradictions and undermining the already very damaged credibility of the popular leader, who has given multiple versions about what he did and did not do since 14.45 of October 29, at which time he left the Palau de la Generalitat to, already according to his version, go to eat at the restaurant El Ventorro with a journalist.
The president has said that he was informed of the decisions made in the body and has sharply denied that “delay” nothing. To underpin his thesis, he has detailed, four months later, 16 calls that supposedly maintained from passing 17.30 to 19.43; The last one that recounts, with the Minomé Pradas Minister, which he dismissed weeks later. Between 19.43 and 20.28, the regional executive has not provided more information about the whereabouts or the actions of the president, which according to his version was in the Palau de la Generalitat or on the way. Impossible to know without the data that the official car record could offer. Distances do not help support their version. Between the restaurant El Ventororo and the Palau de la Generalitat there are 800 meters away and from there to the headquarters of the Cecopi, at the Emergency Coordination Center of L’Eliana, 20 kilometers, about 20 minutes of journey in a vehicle with a driver.
Before that period of time that right now is a mystery, Mazón had maintained that a call at 18.45 in which the risk of breakage of the Foraata dam was informed, which affected the region of the Ribera and not to L’Horta Sud, motivated his displacement from the headquarters of his government to the organ of L’Eliana to “follow in situ” the situation. The delay was due, he said, to a matter of traffic, although official data question this statement.
People present at the Emergency Center insist that Mazón arrived before 20.00. Spanish Radiotelevisión has also contacted witnesses who ratify this version. The Generalitat has leaked a capture of a mazón entrance video whose time codes place their arrival at the emergency building at 20.28.
The leaks of audios and videos shreddly manipulated or the avoidance of relevant official documents have been a constant in the management made by the president of this catastrophe. So the key to the judicial investigation will be in the complete videos of all the cameras present at the Emergency Center of L’Eliana. There you can compare possible schedules.
The cars of the magistrate, who has requested documentation to Raudales, seek to find out who was participating in the Cecopi, who contributed to decision making, referring to both the authorities and technicians who usually conform this crisis committee and those that were incorporated on the march. The Mazón team also plays with these terms, pointing out that “arrived” at 20.28, according to the aforementioned recording of one of the cameras inside the enclosure that the Generalitat contributes to the instruction. It should be remembered that last Saturday there was the change of summer schedule to winter and that the adjustment of video surveillance cameras is manual, as the Consell himself explains in the documentation sent to the court.
Before this latest version, the president of the Generalitat maintained that “from 7 pm.” In the same way that the official version rewritten lunch in the ventorro, which was first a work meal and then a private agape, until he pointed out that he ate “in his status as president of the Popular Party of the Valencian Community” with a journalist to offer him the direction of the public radiotelevisión, another change of version that allows Mazón to justify the bill.
The instructional judge also collects information on whether “any recess occurred” at the Emergency Center Meeting of L’Aliana. The instructor frames the petition in the “decision -making analysis”. He has also commissioned the Organic Judicial Police Unit of the Civil Guard a “strictly technical” report on the chronology of the events of October 29, in which “in detail” analyzes the overflow of rivers, ravines and reservoirs in relation to deaths and injured.
The magistrate’s last car also refers, in relation to the request of the report to the Armed Institute, to the “action of public institutions or organizations whose competences were related to the emergency situation.” It is, remember the judge again, of the “core of the instruction”, which has “derived in a public controversy between the various institutions and people involved.” The magistrate slides a phrase with an alleged reference to President Carlos Mazón: “Some of the interveners have already publicly stated the participation they had but that of others.”
The last bands of the Valencian president have once again focused on the party, only two days after the trip to Madrid where he went to support his version at an informative breakfast in which Alberto Núñez Feijóo did not appear. In the PP nobody dares to defend that Mazón can repeat as a candidate and its leaders just ask that they meet in reconstruction. Judicial investigation has only aggravated its catastrophe management to the point of using as a defense strategy that was further delayed to lead the emergency. The manipulated audios that have been denied rapidly and a radical change of version about what he was doing during the afternoon of October 29 does not help him gain confidence in Genoa 13, the national headquarters of the PP. His whereabouts from 18.45 until a à tip camera captures him at 8.30 pm is a secret that no one has revealed. That recording, which shows the emergency center clock, implies that Mazón would have taken less than two minutes to arrive from the door – where the Generalitat report places it at 20.28 – to the meeting place and immediately had been incorporated into the debate that occurred inside.
The Minister then responsible for emergencies, Salome Pradas, has opted for silence as a judicial strategy. The leader, subsequently ceased that the Generalitat Valenciana and Mazón himself intend to use as firewall, said in recent conversation with eldiario.es: “The truth will already be known. I stay in saying nothing for now, although some information harms me, but I am clear about what happened. ” The witnesses present in the Cecopi maintain that the doubts of the Minister about how to work in the crucial hours of the tragedy and the absence of the president delayed decision making. It was discussed on notices for megaphony, about whether to make appeal through the public radio All testimonies of that afternoon show that there was a clear problem to assume command of the emergency.
As happened in the Metro accident in Valencia in 2006, the PP regional government discharges responsibility for technicians. Pradas told the Antena 3 Public Espejo program that he kept Carlos Mazón informed during the afternoon and that the decision of the ES-Alert message was taken by the technicians. In addition, he explained that there are people who are trying to divert the responsibilities towards her, and not precisely the president.
The Valencian President in the Meanwhile considers that he is triumphant after this batch of documentation provided to the Court. This Thursday, asked if you plan to resign, Mazón said: “Ask those who did not warn of the flood of the poyo”, in reference to the ravine that crosses L’Horta Sud. The Generalitat recognized in writing on the day of the Dana that the monitoring of rivers and ravines is also their responsibility. Firefighters who sent the flow were removed at 3:00 p.m. Although it was the competence of his government, Mazón insists on the thesis of the informative blackout of the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation and to download the responsibility of the catastrophe on state organizations. Now at the expense of admitting that he arrived even later at the Emergency Coordination Center of the Generalitat on tragedy day.
Source: www.eldiario.es
