The “president” of the Generalitat Valenciana, Carlos Mazón, spent the entire morning of Tuesday October 29, the day of the DANA disaster, in a series of events and meetings unrelated to the imminent tragedy, despite the fact that Aemet had placed the situation in red notice. at 7:36 a.m. and warned – at 9:20 a.m. and with exclamation points – that “the danger is extreme!” At no time during the morning, despite the signs, did he suspend his schedule.
At 8:53 a.m., the “president” requests in his account X “caution on the roads” and “particular attention to the instructions of the authorities”. The message included a previous tweet from Emergencies 112 about the red level alert on the south coast of Valencia, which asked people to avoid driving “if it is not necessary”.
At nine o’clock, Mazón presided over the plenary session of the Consell. In the middle of a meeting of the Regional Executive, Aemet was already warning of the “significant” and “even extreme” danger in certain Valencian regions. At 10:45 a.m., Mazón chaired the ceremony of handing over to the Generalitat the certification of Aenor’s tourism sustainability strategy.
The event, which took place at the Palau de la Generalitat, was also attended by the Minister of Innovation, Industry, Trade and Tourism, Nuria Montes, and the CEO of Aenor, Rafael García.
At 11:41 a.m., the University of Valencia had already suspended classes. Around twenty schools had also suspended their activities. On the other hand, the Hydrographic Confederation of Júcar (CHJ) announced, at 11:50 a.m., the overflowing of several ravines and the significant “flood” of the Magro river.
Despite this, around noon, Mazón left the Palau de la Generalitat and moved towards Catalunya Avenue, to the headquarters of the General Directorate of Public Health, located at the northern exit of the city.
There, together with the Minister of Health, Marciano Gómez, he presented the Digital Health Strategy of the Valencian Community, a document aimed at strengthening the health system with new technologies.
At 12:00 p.m., in the latest Aemet report, the warning remained unchanged. At 12:20 p.m., a special warning was issued regarding Poyo Ravine.
Returning to the Palau de la Generalitat, shortly before 1 p.m., the head of the Consell seemed to assure that “at the moment there is no evidence of bodily injury at this time of the morning”, according to a teletype from Europa . News agency published at 12:59 p.m.
In the statements published at 6:00 p.m. by the president, the intensity is reduced in the rest of the Valencian Community. The message in X was later deleted.
“Our troops are fantastic and so we must follow the instructions given to us. In what is happening, fortunately, there is no material damage or hydrological alert and we must all be very attentive and all very attentive to the professionalism of our troops,” he added during this appearance. The reality is that, although he declared that there was no “hydrological alert”, his own government had communicated it 50 minutes earlier on social networks.
At 1:45 p.m., the head of the Regional Executive had planned a meeting with representatives of the UGT unions and workers’ commissions and with the president of the Business Confederation of the Valencian Community, Salvador Navarro, to address the next 2025 budgets of the Community Valencian. Generality. The meeting, as evidenced by the photograph and the Europa Press teletype, took place.
At that time, in front of the Palau de la Generalitat, another institution controlled by the PP took a different path in the face of signs of disaster. At 2 p.m., the Provincial Delegation of Valencia, chaired by Vicente Mompó, sent its workers home, according to an official email revealed by this newspaper.
Around 3 p.m., regional television in Punt reported that the risk was maximum, asked people not to leave their homes and reported that the storm was heading north. At 3:20 p.m., Utiel was already flooded and, at 4:30 p.m., the Military Emergency Unit (UME) was activated in the town.
The Minister of Justice and Interior, Salomé Pradas, who had gone in the morning to the Emergency Center 112, convened around 5 p.m. the first meeting of the Integrated Operational Coordination Center (Cecopi), established to direct monitoring actions taken by the authorities. the rainy season. At 6:30 p.m., the Poyo ravine overflowed at Torrent. A few kilometers further down, it flooded Picanya, Paiporta, Benetússer, Sedaví, Massanassa and Catarroja, where most of the victims died.
The automatic Es-Alert alert arrived much later —at 8:12 p.m.– when hundreds of people were already trapped or dead.
