PP and Vox close ranks and prevent the Minister of Justice, responsible for emergencies, from appearing before the Valencian Parliament. Both parties rejected the opposition groups’ proposal to hold an extraordinary plenary session during which councilors involved in the management of the October 29 floods will report on their actions. Concretely, the opposition focused on the head of Justice and the Interior, Salomé Pradas, who has not held a press conference for weeks, apart from her declarations in À Punt where she declared that she did not know about the telephone alert system.
The plenary session of the Corts Valencianes next week, scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, will debate the proposals of the different parliamentary groups to investigate the management of DANA, but will not include the appearance of any advisor. The PSPV and Compromís demand that the Minister of Emergencies speaks in response to the vague explanations of the President of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, during the monographic plenary session of November 15, the first session since the flood.
The alliance of the PP and the far right has overturned the opposition’s claims. According to them, there is no point in requesting an appearance if they do not know whether Pradas will continue as municipal councilor next week. Both are behind the gradual overhaul carried out by President Mazón, who communicates daily and through press releases the changes within the executive. Since Sunday, three movements have been reported but none of them have been published in the Official Gazette of the Generalitat Valenciana: Susana Camarero assumes the spokesperson of the Consell, Marián Cano will be Minister of Industry in place of Nuria Montes and Lieutenant General Francisco Gan. Pampols will be vice president for reconstruction. We still know nothing about the future of Salomé Pradas, even if pressure for her to leave is constant within the party and the executive.
The silence regarding the current advisor leads the PSPV and Compromís to insinuate that the PP fears a possible declaration from Pradas. The socialist spokesperson, José Muñoz, denounced that “the PP has put a lock on the appearance of Pradas”, which, according to him, “Mazón treats as a sort of protected witness” of what happened on October 29 and the days that followed. “He is the one who knows what happened that day,” since “Mazón did not specify what he did between 5 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.”: “She knows how many times she spoke to him and can answer if she couldn’t locate it. , if she gave indications and why decisions like sending the alert were not adopted”, insisted the socialist. From Compromís, Joan Baldoví agreed to accuse the PP of “blocking the appearances” councilors to celebrate “a normal plenary session as if nothing had happened”. “It’s a real scandal”, he declared, criticizing Vox’s “pagafantista” attitude towards the PP, which allows this plenary session not to take place.
The people defend that the advisors will appear in committee when they are summoned and that there will be a commission of inquiry where Pradas can report on the matters that concern it. “All these appearances will take place,” said its spokesperson, Juanfran Pérez Llorca. Pérez Llorca denied that his group “protects or hides” Pradas, which “does its work at CECOPI”. “We haven’t returned to normality yet, it makes sense that we focus on rebuilding and then, of course, all the necessary advisors appear. And we will do it in accordance with the regulations,” he maintained.
For this, he mentioned the commission of inquiry into DANA, where “all the comparisons could be invited to present themselves or to choose the parties”. “When we know clearly who the new advisors are, all requests in this regard will be met,” he added, and the PSPV disgraced the fact that it did not want to question Pradas during the next session plenary.
