The furious criticism of the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, against the government for the management of DANA which has affected the Valencian Community and has already caused more than 211 deaths could end up eroding the credibility of the president of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, who led the coordination of the disaster response during the first week. So much so that the popular president’s only proposal would be to remove Mazón from leadership of the crisis and hand it over to the Spanish government, a way of directly recognizing the incapacity of its territorial baron to face the problems generated by the storm. At Feijóo’s request, it would be the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, who would take control of the situation in the Valencian Community.
This Monday, the leader of the PP demanded once again that the central government assume sole control of the management of the devastation caused by DANA which devastated the province of Valencia last week. This was stated by Feijóo in a statement at the party’s national headquarters, without questions from journalists and in which he ratified his party’s support for a measure that the president of the Generalitat and leader of the Valencian PP, Carlos Mazón , did not ask or ask. does he intend to present a petition to the central government. All this, while the army is already deployed throughout the territory affected by the storm.
A few hours after Feijóo made his proposal public, the president of the Generalitat appeared, also without questions from journalists, to announce that he would allocate 250 million euros for direct aid to those affected and municipalities. Carlos Mazón, who did not suggest that he intended to declare alert level 3, which would mean entrusting the management of the crisis to the central government, demanded in the same act 31.4 billion from Spanish government through 136 measures to be able to manage reconstruction, both in terms of aid to workers and in terms of public infrastructure. Mazón announced that he “will continue to work” so that the Valencians emerge from the crisis. A declaration of intentions which clashes with the declaration of the president of his party.
“We continue to ask, as we have from the first day, for the declaration of a national emergency and, if it is decided, it will have our support,” said Feijóo, who cannot be asked why he considers that Mazón did not request said declaration. , since the Civil Protection Law provides that the measure is dictated by “the head of the Ministry of the Interior, either on his own initiative, or at the request of the autonomous communities or government delegates who sit there”.
The first time Feijóo demanded the declaration of a national emergency was last Thursday, 36 hours after the floods that have so far left 211 dead and an unknown number of people missing. And he did it indirectly. “We are facing a national emergency. “We are faced with events that are not located exclusively in a single territory, but are scattered over a good part of the national territory,” he said with Mazón himself after a visit to the Emergency Center of Valencia where he took the opportunity to file a complaint against the government, which he accuses of not providing reliable information to the regional executive.
That day, Feijóo defended Mazón and harshly criticized not only the government, but also the autonomous entities that depend on it, such as AEMET or the hydrographic confederations, and questioned whether the executive led by Sánchez had collaborated with regional authorities. “I wouldn’t ask for greater collaboration from central government, I would ask for some collaboration,” he said.
But a few minutes later, Mazón contradicted his leader during an appearance with Sánchez during which he thanked the “early contacts, with you.” [por el presidente del Gobierno] by WhatsApp, with the vice-president, with the Minister of the Interior, the Minister of Defense, with the government delegate here”, as well as their “collaboration”. In fact, government sources have explained that the President of the Generalitat continues to collaborate with the Executive despite his public noise.
The communication strategy of the two was reversed this Monday. About a week after the start of DANA which devastated a good part of the province of Valencia and caused at least 211 deaths, Mazón took advantage of an interview on the Cope network and another on Antena 3 to attack the government and highlight the Ministry of Ecological Transition.
The President of the Generalitat, contrary to what he did before, was already questioning the information sent by the hydrographic confederations. Despite public chronological information, Mazón also criticized the work of the Military Emergency Unit and denied that its actions depended on any “political authority.” Shortly after, the head of the UME denied Mazón: “It is the autonomous community that directs the emergency and decides where we go. » This is the basis of regional competence in emergency matters. Mazón himself had publicly acknowledged on several occasions that it was his government that demanded the Defense troops it needed.
Meanwhile, some leaders of the national PP and members of Congress consider that the management of the crisis “burned Mazón” and already consider him a “political corpse”, reports Europa Press. In this sense, they severely criticize the President of the Generalitat and the Valencian PP for not having asked the government to take command: “Mazón was not up to the task,” explain the same sources.
Mazón and Feijóo, usual frictions
Feijóo tried this Monday to place himself above the partisan skirmishes and cross criticism between administrations. But the opposition leader spent almost no time defending his regional president. He limited himself to “recognizing the administrations that were able to cooperate together in Cecopi, led by President Mazón”. And he proposed a “Valencia plan” for government investments in the region “after design and implementation with the Generalitat Valenciana”, without mentioning the head of the regional Executive.
Mazón was never a Feijóo man. In his time he was supported by Pablo Casado and Teodoro García Egea when they led the match. In Genoa, we are still licking our wounds due to the express pact between Mazón and Vox which conditioned the entire narrative of the electoral campaign of June 23, 2023, when the agreement of the popular party with the far right was revealed.
Since the start of the crisis, Mazón has been dragging his feet to take sole responsibility for managing the crisis since last Tuesday, October 29. The presidency has always maintained that it was the Minister of Justice, Salomé Pradas, who was responsible for coordinating emergencies during the disaster. And that sources from the Valencian Emergency Government confirmed to elDiario.es that Mazón was de facto the one who exercised sole command since Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. when he arrived two and a half hours late to the meeting of the Integrated Center of Operational Coordination. (Cecopi). The fear of many party members is that the management of the crisis could even lead to criminal prosecution. Thus, the first four days of the disaster, Mazón remained in ambiguity, according to some of his colleagues, stunned, until on Saturday he had to go out to convey a message that he was the president of the Generalitat and the one who led the response in the Valencian Community after the appearance of the President of Government, Pedro Sánchez.
Until that moment, the President of the Generalitat had asked the government for the resources it needed, and he had even thanked central government officials. Until his appearance on Saturday, during which he assumed de facto the leadership that corresponded to him by law since the first day, he did not create working groups in the different areas. Suddenly, this Monday, he changed strategy and began to hold the government responsible, first for the alleged lack of advice from the Hydrographic Confederation of Júcar, and even from the Military Emergency Unit which put a quarter of an hour to respond to his first request. help. Previously, Mazón had always collaborated with the Executive and his collaborators believe that, despite public criticism, he will continue to do so.
First problems and noisy silences in the Valencian PP
His management is increasingly called into question, even behind the closed doors of his party. Throughout the crisis, Carlos Mazón surrounded himself with a small core of his greatest confidence. The three regional secretaries with whom he developed the political strategy of counter-attack and sole command last Saturday. His entire Council and the president of the Provincial Deputation of Valencia, Vicente Mompó, who had been his support in the first days of the crisis, were left aside. Also striking are the disappearance of the secretary general of the Popular Party of the Valencian Community, Juan Francisco Pérez Llorca, and the discreet profile of the mayor of Valencia, deputy and leader of the PP of the city, María José Catalá. We also know nothing about the popular MEP and Feijóo strongman in Valencia, alongside Català, Esteban González Pons.
Sources from the PP in the province of Valencia criticize the fact that Mazón has locked himself away alone with his Alicante team. “We don’t know anything about what’s going on in there. “We are very worried,” they explain. The PP mayors of Alfafar and Massanassa openly criticized the management of the crisis which hit their municipalities hard with dozens of deaths. The criticism against the Emergency team with which he surrounded himself and which is now also in the spotlight is more significant. “It is a disaster and there is no sign of improvement,” they emphasize.
