The president of the Valencian Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, and the president of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, are mobilizing all their forces to present the Spanish government as responsible for the catastrophe of managing the effects of DANA on October 29. which cost the lives of more than 210 people in the province of Valencia, but also seven in Castile-La Mancha and one in Andalusia. Feijóo, because he says that the executive of Pedro Sánchez should have taken Military Man the autonomous Valencian government to manage an emergency that meteorologists have been warning about for a week. And Mazón, because he considers that he did not have and does not have all the state resources he needs. The reality of private messages and calls between members of Pedro Sánchez’s government and the head of the Consell is different.
On October 29, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, wrote after 10 p.m. to the President of the Generalitat to inquire about the situation of DANA and to make himself available to him, according to sources consulted by elDiario.es. Mazón, who already had the UME after requesting it first for Utiel at 3:00 p.m. and then for the entire province at 8:30 p.m., responded that everything was correct and – as the President of the Generalitat himself said later – to ask him. “Coordinate as much as possible. » Previously, up to four ministers and a secretary of state had contacted Mazón and his Minister of Justice, Salomé Pradas, to receive instructions and put resources at their disposal, since the powers in case of emergency belong to the Generalitat. On October 30, a fifth minister, Diana Morant, wrote to Mazón to offer her collaboration, this time as general secretary of the Valencian socialists. In this case, “to provide stability,” explain members of Morant’s team, which has already announced that it will approve Mazón’s budgets for 2025.
The first to contact Carlos Mazón was the government delegate, Pilar Bernabé. After Mazón’s arrival at the Integrated Operational Center (Cecopi) after his hearty meal with journalist Maribel Vilaplana, the president was informed of the entire situation. At that time, the UME was already mobilized in Utiel and soon after, with Mazón already in Cecopi, it was requested for the entire province. Between 7:35 p.m. and 8:20 p.m., the Minister of Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, tried to contact the president of the Generalitat Valenciana through three telephone calls that went unanswered. It was 8:20 p.m. when the vice-president and aspiring European commissioner sent him a text message offering: “Tell me everything we can do to help you.” »
This message from Ribera sent from Brussels was published on social networks by Mazón himself to complain about the government’s delayed reaction. “The president of the CHJ is agitated but conducts with the greatest caution. Marlaska and civil protection in it. Aemet is following developments,” she told him. Mazón shared it on Twitter with the message: “Enough manipulation. This SMS [se mandó] at 8:20 p.m. after sending the alert and without coverage at Cecopi. “That’s what happened.” Mazón forgot to mention the three previous calls to which he did not respond, hiding behind the lack of coverage of the Eliana 112 emergency center.
There was also a subsequent appeal. As sources from Ecological Transition explained to elDiario.es, after the SMS, the vice president’s team managed to locate the president thanks to the cell phone of someone who was next to him and who physically sent it to him. The minister herself explained the content of the conversation on SER: “It was a short conversation: ‘President, what happened, how can we help you and what do you want us to do?’ He told me, “The situation was going well, but it got out of control this afternoon. Forgive me, I’ll call you in 10 minutes. This is the conversation we had. Logically, he didn’t call me again, which I understood perfectly well.”
Hugo Morán, Secretary of State for the Environment who reports to Ribera, also contacted another member of the Mazón government, the Minister of Justice, around 8 p.m. that day. Morán, when the vice president was unable to locate Mazón, called Salomé Pradas to inform her of the serious situation at the Forata Dam. The secretary of state was in Colombia on a work trip. It was the problems of Forata, which opened its floodgates, which forced the alarm message launched at 8:12 p.m. and prepared since 6:00 p.m.
The first vice president of the government, María Jesús Montero, then intervened and called Carlos Mazón at 9:03 p.m. In this case, Montero said that he had at his side the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, and that the government would put at his disposal “everything that is necessary “. Mazón, according to the different sources consulted and according to what the regional president himself said on Monday, told him that everything “was going very badly”. The President of the Generalitat also reportedly requested that Interior and Defense troops be mobilized to intervene. At that time, the UME and the state security forces and bodies of the province of Valencia were mobilized.
After 10:00 p.m., messages arrived from President Sánchez making himself available to the Generalitat and Mazón responded cordially and informed him that everything was correct. Mazón assured that in this message he asked Sánchez for “maximum coordination”.
That night, the Spanish government created a crisis committee to monitor DANA in Moncloa, in which, in addition to Montero, Grande-Marlaska, Robles and Ribera, the Minister of Presidency and Justice Félix Bolaños participated by videoconference. The first meeting took place in the offices of the Department of Homeland Security, in the Moncloa complex. Early in the morning of Wednesday October 30, the Minister of Science and Innovation herself, Diana Morant, contacted Mazón by message to put herself at his disposal as leader of the Valencian socialists. Mazón thanked the message. Since this contact, Morant sent a CSIC ship to Valencia to collaborate in the search for the bodies and announced that he would support the 2025 budgets that Mazón presents for reconstruction.
The passage of ministers through the affected areas has been important in recent days, the last being that of Angel Víctor Torres, who presided over the Cecopi this Tuesday with Mazón.
With this battery of calls and messages from vice presidents, ministers and the secretary of state, the government’s apathy, according to Mazón, is difficult to defend. Feijóo’s proposal for intervention of the Generalitat by the government has a better explanation. But this meant the dismissal of Mazón, which the head of the Consell himself resisted.
