Mazón after Mazón

With the new year, the People's Party finally managed to steer the Valencian Community's handling of the DANA storm crisis more or less where they wanted it: Mazón was forced to resign and replaced by a new president of the Consell (although the chosen candidate wasn't even Feijóo's preferred choice; the urgent priority was removing the disgraced Mazón from the front lines). Juan Francisco Pérez Llorca—Juanfran, to his friends—now heads an executive branch that can calmly focus on what matters: taking charge of the Valencian Community's reconstruction plan after the DANA storm, a Plan Endavant (as it's called) that allocates 29 billion euros to be distributed among the regions. It's important not to forget this, because, as the poet said, this is the true heart of the matter.

Mazón, for his part, has also emerged quite fortunately: from being the most scorned and repudiated figure in Valencian, and Spanish, public life, he managed to become, practically overnight, the most unremarkable member of the People's Party (PP) in the Valencian Parliament. Mazón has found a way to camouflage himself in an identity as mediocre as he deserves, like a rodent hiding inside a burrow. Of course, he has the not insignificant incentive of his parliamentary salary, supplemented by an extra payment of almost nine thousand euros a year for chairing the rules committee, which hasn't met since 2020. And most importantly: his protected status, which shields him from the investigation into Nuria Ruiz Tobarra, undoubtedly the person Mazón fears most right now.

Mazón, indeed, has reason to be uneasy. He knows that if things take a turn for the worse in the courts, he will find no refuge in his party, where they will—this time for sure—turn their backs on him. For now, he is allowed to play the role of a well-paid zombie in his seat in the back row of the parliamentary group, but any legal twist could definitively confirm his status as a political corpse. The public—the same public that precipitated the end of his presidency—is understandably not satisfied with the resignation of a figure who has personified, like no other, contempt for the victims, and the next demonstration demanding criminal accountability against him ("Mazón in prison") is scheduled for March 1st.

A few days ago, while José Manuel Cuenca, Mazón's former chief of staff, was embarrassing everyone with his appearance before the Congressional committee investigating the DANA storm, Judge Nuria Ruiz Tobarra issued a very strong ruling. She made it clear that attempting to exonerate the Valencian regional government (Generalitat Valenciana) from its handling of the disaster, and that Salomé Pradas and her deputy, Emilio Argüello, defended Feijóo during their appearance before the committee. This constitutes living "in a parallel reality that obstructs the judicial process." It's a statement that also sounds like a warning.