“Mazón resign!” shouted tens of thousands of people on Saturday November 9, during one of the most massive demonstrations recorded in Valencia. “The whole system has failed,” the head of the Consell affirmed in the Valencia courts on Friday, without taking any responsibility for the unfortunate emergency response to the DANA flood of October 29, a tragedy that has already left 216 dead and 16 missing.
Valencian society demands the resignation of the President of the Consell
Mazón presents exoneration plea for actions in DANA disaster
In one week we experienced one of the most massive protests that can be remembered in the streets of Valencia, in which tens of thousands of people called for the resignation of the President of the Generalitat Valenciana, Carlos Mazón , for its negligence in the management of the alert in response to the floods caused on October 29 by DANA. We have since overcome a second weather episode of isolated depression at high levels which, this time, caused alerts to be triggered, but did not generate further damage. And now Mazón’s appearance has arrived in the Valencian courts, this Friday, to hide behind a story that offends common sense.
All this while cleaning and recovery work continues in the affected localities and the death toll reaches 216, of which 16 people have not yet been found. This list of deaths gives an idea of the scale of the tragedy, of which almost half, 104, were people over 70 and nine were children. Paiporta, with 45 victims, and Catarroja, with 25, are the municipalities that recorded the most deaths.
Mazón evaded Parliament, more than two weeks after the floods, taking full responsibility for the response to the disaster and claiming that “the whole system had failed.” In an attitude that he adopted with the PP a few days after the floods, the head of the Consell accused the Hydrographic Confederation of Júcar and the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) of having provided insufficient information. The head of Emergency then retreats into a fantasy in which he would, in reality, have been the victim of a conspiracy of nature combined with the failure of the planned protocols (“the monstrous ravine caused by an atmospheric phenomenon which exceeded the worst Aemet’s forecasts”, according to what he said).
The deplorable, although expected, position of Mazón, given his training in this type of trances, in which he traces the strategy of the PP in previous disasters and trusts in his own lies, is accompanied by an overhaul of the Consell which consists of creating an emergency system. Department and a vice-presidency to coordinate the reconstruction after DANA. This maneuver is unlikely to put an end to criticism of the actions of the Valencian government, led by its president, given the total absence of self-criticism on its part. Because from what happened, it does not follow that the emergency protocols and mechanisms failed, as the cornered president claims, but rather that those who had, with him at the helm, the obligation to activating them in time failed miserably.
Opposition groups have put their finger on this wound. The Socialists and Compromís demanded Mazón’s resignation during the plenary session in which he presented himself for a long speech that he had entirely prepared on a large stack of pages. The once talkative president stuck to a written script which, as Valencian spokesperson Joan Baldoví pointed out, seemed “not to have been written by his advisers but by his lawyers”, with a possible defense in court in which he would do so as soon as possible. How late the affair would be. The spokesperson for the PSPV, José Muñoz, whose group had not until now requested the resignation of the president, demanded his dismissal, the appointment of a “technical” or “transitional” head of the Consell and the calling elections in 2025. The general secretary of the socialists and minister of Science, Innovation and Universities, Diana Morant, gathered her executive and demanded that the PP fire Mazón.
Everyone remembers those hours of October 29 when Mazón was absent from the Integrated Operational Coordination Center (Cecopi) because he was having a meal. An episode that the head of the Consell haughtily rejected, saying: “I kept my agenda fully aware of the situation.” He was so “fully aware” that his team hid the reason for this agape and tried to cover it up for days until he attributed it to a meeting with a journalist to offer her the management of the radio and Valencian Television In Punt. Mazón’s lies and omissions on DANA have been numerous, on the emergency protocols, the warnings from the Hydrographic Confederation of Júcar and the information from the National Meteorological Agency, the call from Cecopi, the warnings (or rather their absence) to the town halls of the danger which threatened them and the maintenance of their own agenda while there were floods and serious problems in the affected areas for hours.
This last aspect, which concerns the personal responsibility of Mazón as “sole commander” of emergencies, has been marked in public opinion in a way that will remain in the history of infamy in the memory of Valencians “Comment was he able to eat peacefully during”. Utiel and Requena were flooded? How could it have disappeared while we, the Valencians, were facing the worst catastrophe? » Baldoví reproached him. During the gigantic demonstration of December 9 in Valencia, a slogan was chanted which will constantly bounce back in the memory of this event:“Mentre Dinava, el Poble s’ofegava”. While he was eating, people were drowning… It is an indelible image, which will haunt Mazón and the Valencian PP for a long time.
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