Not only Mazón

The first note concerns the lack of leadership within the Popular Party: if Mazón ultimately falls, it won't be because of Feijóo's decision, but rather the party's entourage, from the Madrid newspapers of the nationalist right to the owner of Mercadona. They are the ones who leave the current president of the Generalitat breathless, a figure who dug his own political grave when he tried to take his particular escape a little further, with statements that were sufficiently offensive that, as is often the case, they ended up as a kind of joke in bad taste: "Did I get to Cecopi—or not?" That Mazón should resign or fall from the presidency of the Generalitat Valenciana is something that should have happened a long time ago: there are 227 victims, many of whom—and this is Mazón's grave, terrible responsibility—could have been avoided with reasonably effective management of the resources available to the Valencian government. Therefore, his dismissal or removal is justified, and we shouldn't have been arguing about it for so long.

Now, not far from Mazón, neither geographically nor ideologically, we have the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who is burdened by 7,231 deaths in nursing homes during the hardest days of the pandemic (five years ago) that deserve the same consideration: a good part of these deaths were the same consideration: a good part of these deaths were the same consideration: a good part of these deaths were the same consideration. Instead of taking advantage of the resources available, Ayuso and her administration applied the so-called protocols of shame, which established that elderly people in nursing homes who were sick with COVID were not to be transferred to hospitals, they said, to avoid saturation. "However, they had to die anyway," was the only comment President Ayuso had made. Until yesterday, when she said that the figure of 7,219 deaths was an "invention" of the previous counselor, and that the actual number of deaths in nursing homes was 4,100, which must clearly be low. Incredibly, apart from a few recriminations from the left, and even then few, no one has seriously demanded the resignation of the president of Madrid, either for her calamitous handling of the pandemic or for her repeated lack of respect for the victims and their families. Why is it true for Mazón and not for Ayuso?

We'll leave the question for readers to consider, while reminding them that the People's Party (PP) has long had a special relationship with the dead: from questioning the need to respect their memory, as they have repeatedly done with the victims of Franco's regime, to mixing up the pieces, as Defense Minister Trillo did with the soldiers, and doing the same with both the victims of ETA and those of Islamist terrorism. Speaking of interests, and returning to the previous question, we can venture a hypothesis: make sure it doesn't have to do with Mazón becoming an overly visible obstacle in contracts and bidding processes that require a high degree of opacity.