Mazón denies that he was incommunicado after El Ventorro: "He must have been walking down the street with his mobile phone in his backpack"

Barcelona / MadridA year after the devastating storm, the acting president of the Valencian Community, Carlos Mazón, still hasn't explained what he did from 6:45 p.m., when he left El Ventorro and accompanied Maribel Vilaplana to the parking lot where her car was, until he arrived at the Integrated Operational Coordination Center (CECOPI) in Eliana at 8:28 p.m. The great mystery of that fateful day is what he did.this hour and a halfAnd this Monday, the still-serving head of the Valencian government, appearing before the parliamentary commission investigating the DANA storm without any members of the PP leadership present and with a protest by victims outside the Congress building, also refused to explain. This was despite the fact that, unlike his appearance last week before the Valencian Parliament, the session was structured as an interrogation in which the various political groups pressured him as much as possible and reminded him of his obligation to tell the truth, aiming to elicit a revelation. This and the other mysteries that still surround his administration That fateful 29-0 last year.

Mazón has insisted that he has already made his itinerary public and has denounced the many lies that have been published about what he did that afternoon. "From the restaurant I walked to the Palau de la Generalitat and from there to the Cecopio," he simply stated, without clarifying the exact time. He only revealed that he didn't go home and that he went from the restaurant to the Palau without bodyguards. "And why didn't you answer the phone at 7:10 p.m. and 7:37 p.m. with Minister Pradas?" asked Compromís deputy Àgueda Micó, reminding him that he was already on high alert. "Perhaps I was walking and had my phone in my backpack," was his only reply. The former councilor explained that in those two calls she wanted to inform him about sending the alert because the Poio ravine had already overflowed, unleashing the massive wave that buried towns like Paiporta and Catarroja. "Not answering the phone twice doesn't mean being out of contact because at that moment I was talking to other people, and I returned his call at 7:43 p.m.," she added. However, Mazón didn't make a single call between 6:57 p.m. and 7:34 p.m., during the most critical moments of the flood.

The acting Valencian president has also distanced himself from the delay in alerting the public, although, as the left-wing groups reminded him, a draft had already been prepared at 6:37 p.m. "Those in charge of the operations, the technicians, will have to be asked; given their experience, they are the ones who should make the decision, and Pradas didn't ask my authorization to send the alert," he concluded. In fact, he stated that it wasn't until the 7:43 p.m. call that Pradas informed him the alert would be sent, and that neither she nor any other member present at the Cecopio (Emergency Coordination Center) had communicated it beforehand. "It was sent when the operational commanders decided, but the Cecopio isn't the Generalitat (Catalan government), there's no ES-Alert protocol, and it's not common for presidents to go to the Cecopio," he defended himself. The ERC spokesperson in Congress, Gabriel Rufián, who was at the center of the most tense moment by showing him photograph after photograph of the victims, refuted Mazón's claims about the lack of an ES-Alert sending protocol and showed him the document. "This is a draft pending validation," the head of the interim Consell (Valencian government) replied.

"Nothing would have changed if I had arrived at the Cecopio earlier."

Mazón also reiterated that AEMET (the Spanish State Meteorological Agency) did not advise them on the need to issue the alert with the forecasts they were receiving. "With the verified information, we knew there were floods in Utiel, but we had no news about the Poio ravine, and most of the victims were victims of its overflow, which was not anticipated," he stated, even though the Generalitat (Valencian regional government) itself activated a hydrological alert for the ravine at 12:20 PM, which remained in effect throughout the day due to the rising water level. In any case, Mazón said that "AEMET was saying at six o'clock that the storm was heading towards Cuenca," as he has maintained from the beginning, and even went so far as to say that they thought "the Cecopio (Provincial Emergency Coordination Center) meeting would be short," despite the fact that rescues were already underway in Utiel by midday. "Nothing would have changed if I had arrived at the Cecopio earlier; it was a problem of lack of information," he declared, once again shirking his responsibility for the catastrophe and blaming state agencies. "At 7:43 p.m., I didn't know that people were drowning, and we weren't aware of the first loss of life until well into the early hours of the morning," he added. Mazón displayed a front page of ABC from October 13, 2025, with an image of a street flooded by Storm Alice in the Terres de l'Ebre region to justify maintaining his schedule on the day of the storm, which left 229 dead in the Valencian Community. "I maintained my schedule for the same reason that the President of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Salvador Illa, also maintained his schedule despite the red alert and images like this one in Tarragona," he argued, even though no deaths occurred in Catalonia and Illa chaired the CECAT meeting to address the situation that same day. Reiterating that he is the only leader who apologized, reshuffled his government, and resigned, Mazón concluded his remarks amidst timid applause from the PP representatives and astonishment from the other parties, with the exception of Vox, which used the session to once again attack the Spanish government.