Mazón, half a year later

This Monday, April 28, there will be a large demonstration in Valencia demanding the resignation of the president of the Valencian Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, the seventh since October 29, the date of the DANA (National Anti-Terrorist Operation) that claimed the lives of 228 Valencians. Undoubtedly, Mazón and the Popular Party hoped that, by now, public outrage would have subsided. This was not the case. Over these months, Mazón has waged a desperate and often obscene headlong rush, in which lies, changes of story, and alternating registers and tones in his discourse, from the scurrilous to the threatening, have been the constants. Many have written him off during this time; the PP has vacillated and frequently changed its mind and tactics, but for now, Mazón remains president of the Generalitat. For him, this is all that matters.

This seventh demonstration comes just the day before the half-year anniversary of the catastrophe, as well as the start of a European People's Party congress in Valencia. The current president of the European People's Party (PP), German Manfred Weber, is a hard-right politician fully aligned with the Spanish People's Party (PP), especially in their goal of overthrowing the left-wing Spanish government by any means necessary. They will seek with this congress to turn the narrative of events on its head, so that the PP regional government is hailed as working hard for the well-being of its citizens, and Pedro Sánchez's government as the party responsible for all the misfortunes. This is Mazón's current discourse, delivered from Madrid's Génova Street, and which will receive European coverage this week. Predictably, they will also seek to build a nostalgic bridge with the triumphant acclamations of other Valencian congresses of the People's Party (PP), during the prosperous times of Rajoy and Rita. Mazón oscillates between the role of an annoying presence (due to his failure) and that of a figure to be vindicated (as another victim of Pedro Sánchez).

But the Valencian president is not only striving to remain in power, but above all, to use it. In these six months, the Council presided over by Mazón has already awarded €248.2 million in emergency contracts (read: awarded by hand) to carry out what Mazón himself calls "reconstruction," which in reality evokes a certain nostalgia for the old days: specifically, the years of the K regime.and the major urban development deals of the Valencian People's Party (PP). Aside from the usual suspects in these contracts, such as FCC and Rover Rail, the list of those awarded these contracts includes many companies implicated in PP corruption scandals: Ocide, Becsa, CHM, Pavasal, etc. In addition, there is the blatant conflict of interest and the more than likely fraud caused by the transfer of €1.5 million from the Valencian government to the Alicante Chamber of Commerce, an organization of which Mazón is the manager on leave. Six months after the DANA, and to use Mazón's own words, it is the PP in its purest and most unadulterated form.