The president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Carlos Mazonaffirmed this Friday that “sufficient explanations” have already been given about his meal on October 29, the day of the catastrophic DANA which left more than two hundred dead in Valencia, with the journalist Maribel Vilaplana to offer him the address of To Punt.
Vilaplana broke his silence this Thursday in a statement to La Vanguardia in which he assured that it was the first time he met the head of the Consell, that he rejected the offer and that at no time did he had expressed his concern about the weather situation. , which she was also unaware of during her lunch at the El Ventorro restaurant in the town of Turia.
When asked about it, Mazón reiterated that he had said everything he had to say on the subject, although it is true that he did not refer to food during his appearance at the Valencian Cortes and limited himself to emphasizing that was informed of everything that was happening during the day. At two o’clock in the afternoon, the Military Emergency Unit (UME) was activated in Utiel and the storm had already caused devastation in the Ribera Alta region. In fact, they were looking for a missing person in Alcúdia.
After leaving the restaurant around 5:45 p.m., Mazón went to the Palau de la Generalitat and, shortly after, to the headquarters of 112 in Eliana. He only arrived at the Integrated Operational Coordination Center (Cecopi) after seven in the afternoon, as he justified before Parliament, due to traffic jams.
“You all know there were two days in one. Before seven o’clock (in the afternoon) and after seven o’clock, when information that was not available before began to arrive, everything changed. And I went there personally. Until then, in the morning, everyone was in their place, the Cecopi was constituted – which happened at five o’clock in the afternoon – with all its members. He made valid decisions for what was a storm, rain, and not for the meteorological madness that it later became. Aemet herself had warned that morning that the storm would move in at six o’clock,” Mazón said at an event in Algemesí.
“And that is why, with the entire Cecopi established, with all the technicians in their place, with the logical precautions that had to be taken, I kept my morning agenda, the three events that I had and this working lunch,” he said. » added, while he is back. charge against the Hydrographic Confederation of Júcar (CHJ).
“There was a power outage at the Poyo ravine, very serious and very important. We also didn’t know what was happening with the (Forata) dam. I don’t want to get into a controversy, because in reality, the entities that depend on the Spanish government could have had much better, much more up-to-date information. I believe there is no doubt about that. But I want us to focus on reconstruction,” he concluded, paying attention to the media.
Miguel Polo demands to know “where he ate”
In the same spirit, the first vice-president and spokesperson of the Generalitat, Susana Camarero, indicated that “there was no information” this forced the councilors to suspend their agendas, even though by noon on the 29th chaos was already reigning on many flooded roads and the Provincial Consortium of Firefighters of Valencia had not stopped carrying out rescue operations by air route. “We all fulfilled our obligations, because it could not be otherwise,” he said.
In addition, he defended that the Generalitat communicated “with all the municipalities affected by the hydrological alarms” and that the mayors “were informed as soon as possible.”
At the same time and after being questioned about Mazón’s lunch, Camarero demanded to know “Where did the president of the CHJ, Miguel Polo” eat that daywhom he accuses of having maintained a “dramatic silence on what was happening in the Poyo ravine” for “two and a half hours”.
“I did not monitor the ravines and dams,” he lamented, and he did not personally come to Cecopi on any day. “The CHJ did not process reliable data on the afternoon of the flood, these were estimates containing errors and inaccuracies,” he stressed.
Government insists there was a ‘power outage’ in Cecopi
The vice-president of the Generalitat also indicted the government delegate in the Valencian Community, Pilar Bernabé, whom she accuses of having generated a “new smoke screen” to “cover the lack of information” with the suspension of the Cecopi meeting this afternoon, which representatives of the Delegation, the CHJ and the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) followed electronically.
According to Bernabé, the break occurred between 6 and 7 p.m. – at the most critical times of the day – at the suggestion of the former Minister of Justice and Interior, Salomé Pradas, who had the “power” to ask for it at that time.
Image of the government delegate, Pilar Bernabé, of the minister Ángel Víctor Torres and of the vice-president of the Generalitat, Susana Camarero, this Thursday, at the Cecopi meeting
“They asked for it and they said they had to take a break. And then we turn off the camera and the microphone. And when they reconnected us and asked us to reconnect, we reconnected. SO He stopped for a moment again to write a message. These are the problems that happened there. But these will be questions that will have to be explained by whoever holds power,” he argued.
Susana Camarero rejected it: the meeting “was never suspended.” The government delegate, she insisted, is “co-director of Cecopi with the Minister of Justice”. “The normal thing is to report to 112 and participate in the deliberations and the meeting in person, not online,” he said.
“The Cecopi was on its way. What is surprising is that he is not physically the one who makes up the Cecopi board of directors. If the people who make up the Cecopi Board of Directors have any questions, Why weren’t they there? “They probably wouldn’t have any doubts 24 days later,” he said.
In this regard, the government delegate clarified that she received the call to the meeting at 4:18 p.m. while she was heading towards Utiel – where the Magro River had overflowed – and that she returned to the headquarters of the Delegation to log into the meeting with the link they had facilitated.
