All the lies and contradictions in Carlos Mazón's farewell speech

BarcelonaOne year and five days later the disastrous woman in the Valencian Country, Carlos Mazón has announced his resignation. He did so in his usual style: despite some points of self-criticism, he maintained the falsehoods he has defended from day one to deflect responsibility for a tragedy that resulted in 229 deaths, blaming state agencies for failing to warn and the Spanish government for the lack of assistance received.

Mazón began his appearance this Monday by saying that one of his mistakes was allowing "all kinds of lies to be generated by not giving explanations at the time." But the fact is, it's still unknown 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 halfIt is true that Mazón's team took ten days to reveal who he had eaten with at the Valencian restaurant, and when they did, it went give different versions about the reasons and duration.

Mazón has accused the Júcar River Basin Authority (CHX) and the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) of concealing key information needed to assess the risk posed by the DANA storm. Aemet's alert was at red alert level from 7:31 a.m., and by 11:50 a.m., the CHX had already announced overflowing ravines and that the Magro River was rising "significantly." At 2:23 p.m., Aemet reiterated that the situation remained "very adverse" and that the alert was in effect until 6:00 p.m. At that time, Aemet contacted Civil Protection to inform them of the extension of the alert until 8:00 p.m. However, a video that the Valencian government concealed for months from the judge in Catarroja confirmed that the former Minister of the Interior, Salomé Pradas, who is charged in the case, knew that the Poio ravine and the Magro River needed to be monitored from 12:32 p.m.

Despite admitting that it was a mistake to maintain that day's schedule and that he should have traveled to Utiel, the fact is that the now former Valencian president, as Vilaplana stated today in his appearance in court, I wasn't in a hurry to finish lunch. And that the atmosphere was relaxed because they even talked about football. The Utiel case is the bloodiest because, although the journalist has denied it today, Mazón called the president of the Valencia Provincial Council, Vicent Mompó, to ask for the phone number of the mayor of that town six minutes after Vilaplana received a message from her ex-husband with images of the devastation in Utiel.as the ARA reported a year ago.

The Spanish government delegate, Pilar Bernabé, explained that she called Pradas three times that day (at 12:23 p.m., 12:48 p.m., and 2:00 p.m.) to offer her resources, but she refused. Minutes after 2:00 p.m., Pradas did accept the army's help, but only for Utiel. After the disaster, the regional minister denied these offers from the Spanish government delegate, but footage captured by TVE of a meeting with her team contradicted her, as she can be heard speaking about this very offer: "The Military Emergency Unit (UME) has made itself available to be deployed here."

The military deployment in the Valencian Community was, in the words of Felipe VI, "the largest operation of the army in peacetime" with the presence of 30,000 active military personnel –up to 8,500 simultaneously on the ground–, during five months in which they carried out thousands of missions related to the search for missing persons, extraction, rescue of vehicles from riverbeds and ravines, as well as supplying the population with water, food and basic necessities in the 72 municipalities affected by the flood.

The Valencian president has once again blamed state agencies for failing to warn of the storm's effects. Mazón stated that both the Júcar River Basin Authority (CHX) and Aemet—both agencies under the Spanish government—made mistakes and disseminated "erroneous information" about what would happen. "But I won't call them murderers," Mazón declared in his closing remarks. "They even went so far as to claim that I interfered by delaying the alert to cover up the serious errors made by the government agencies," he reiterated immediately afterward. In several rulings upheld by the Provincial Court of Valencia, however, the judge has refused to indict those responsible at Aemet or the CHX and has dismissed Mazón's claims about an alleged lack of information regarding riverbeds and ravines or about "the absence of an alert" as "fiction" or "self-fiction."

Mazón's words are not backed by action. For a year, he has ignored calls for his resignation during the dozen massive demonstrations held in Valencia, and he has also avoided meeting with the main associations of victims of the DANA storm. He has even encouraged the creation of new associations that are not hostile to him, with whom he has been able to meet and be photographed. He has also avoided visiting the affected towns after being booed in the initial days.

The now former president remained oblivious to the public outrage until last Wednesday, when at the state funeral he faced, for the first time, the families who had lost everything that afternoon and who called him a "murderer." That was the trigger for Mazón's decision to step down. Until then, he had ruled out resigning and always maintained that the focus now was on reconstruction. "I never thought about throwing in the towel," he even said. OK Daily in the first interview he gave on the first anniversary of the DANA storm.

The mobile phone alert was sent at 8:11 p.m., by which time the 112 emergency service had already received more than 15,000 calls for help. Based on statements from family members and witnesses, the judge in Catarroja concluded that the delayed sending of the alert caused the deaths. In fact, Pradas contradicted Mazón and asserted that he notified him about the alert being sent, after calling him twice that afternoon to report it, but the then-president of Valencia did not answer the phone. Inmaculada Piles, head of the Generalitat's 112 emergency service, testified before the judge that the Spanish government requested the alert be sent at 6:35 p.m. At that time, Mazón was still with Vilaplana.

Mazón rejected all offers from the Catarroja judge to testify voluntarily and took advantage of his protected status to avoid cooperating with the justice system in the case opened regarding the handling of the flood. His decision to resign as president of the Generalitat, but not his seat in parliament, allows him to retain his protected status. Furthermore, the resignation comes after pressure from the national leadership of the People's Party (PP) to reverse the hemorrhaging of electoral support reflected in all the polls.