President Carlos Mazón took shelter behind his Minister of Justice and Interior, Salomé Pradas, so as not to appear legally as the main person responsible for the catastrophic response to the DANA emergency of October 29, which, for at the moment, 215 dead. . And this despite the fact that since he joined the first meeting of the Integrated Operational Coordination Center (Cecopi) around 7:30 p.m., he held real and effective command of the emergency intervention, a regional competence which has protocols ” certainly clear.” emergencies, as Mazón assured in 2022 when he led the opposition to the socialist president at the time, Ximo Puig. On the day of the tragedy, four ministers and President Pedro Sánchez immediately offered their help directly to the head of the Consell, who commanded the first Cecopi once it arrived, after a long meal, at the Emergency Coordination Center in L’Eliana. A collaboration that the regional president himself rejected despite the scale of the disaster.
In fact, sources from the previous executive express their indignation at the approach of Carlos Mazón, who did not declare on paper the “catastrophic emergency situation”, a possibility provided for in article 12 of the autonomous law civil protection and emergency management. The declaration would signify “the President’s assumption of sole command and direction of all emergency activities,” according to the rule. Instead, Mazón delegated command to the less agile and inexperienced Councilor Salomé Pradas, the leading candidate to be replaced in an imminent restructuring of the Consell. Regardless, Valencian law indicates that the Consell – and not the central government, as the Spanish right suggests – is the “higher management and coordination body” of emergency response.
Several emerging initiatives have sparked complaints or complaints against the president of the Generalitat Valenciana for his management of the response to the DANA emergency, notably for the very late decision to send the massive alert to cell phones on October 29 in 8:11 p.m. , while hundreds of people were already trapped. The doubts of Minister Pradas and the notable absence of Mazón delayed the sending of the Es-Alert system by two hours, as reported by this newspaper.
There is a precedent in legal terms: two former mayors of Finestrat, a town in the Marina Baixa region of Alicante, were found guilty of the crime of manslaughter after a flood that hit the municipality and in which a British couple died.
The Consell led by Mazón operates on two different levels: on the real and effective level and on the legal level. Minister Salomé Pradas disappeared from the scene even though she was, by law, alone at the head of the response to the disaster. Not only Pradas or Nuria Montes (after their inappropriate statements about the victims’ relatives): spokesperson Ruth Merino also took a back seat, replaced in this role by vice-president Susana Camarero.
Additionally, six days after the tragedy, Mazón also turned to his only leadership position with a solid disaster resume, that of Civil Guard Captain Rosa Touris, who despite being director general of Fire Prevention, became spokesperson after the Cecopi meetings. Lurches and chained lies have been the trend of Carlos Mazón’s leadership, with a team of senior Emergency officials completely absent.
The “de facto” spokesperson: Mazón “is not part of Cecopi”
The new “de facto” spokesperson for the Consell assured this Tuesday that “the president [Mazón] She is not part of Cecopi”, an organization officially chaired by Pradas, as Susana Camarero recalls. However, a Cecopi report from November 1, revealed by elDiario.es, indicates on an official letterhead from Valencia City Hall: Carlos Mazón “chairs” the meeting of the body. Cecopi is made up of around twenty institutions that participate in the emergency response, including state security forces and organizations.
The head of the Consell exercised real command to the point that, on November 2, Mazón blocked the Cecopi for eight hours, after locking himself up with his presidential team to prepare for an appearance. Not to be part of the Cecopi, as Vice President Susana Camarero affirmed, the truth is that this meeting of the emergency committee only started when Carlos Mazón was not available.
“The decisions of the Cecopi are made by the bodies that make up the Cecopi and we should not wait for the president to make a decision,” Camarero said in reference to the first meeting on October 29, the day of DANA. However, the delay – of eight hours, while waiting for Carlos Mazón – of the November 2 meeting categorically refutes the thesis put forward by Vice President Camarero.
