Mazón's chief of staff denies giving orders to Salomé Pradas

ValenciaThe former chief of staff to Carlos Mazón denied on Friday having given any orders to the then Minister of Justice and the Interior, Salomé Pradas, on the day of the DANA storm, and asserted that he only expressed legal doubts in the messages in which he asked Pradas not to impose a lockdown on the population under any circumstances. According to José Manuel Cuenca, the messages have been taken out of context. This information was obtained by ARA from sources present at his appearance as a witness before the judge in Catarroja.

Cuenca has been called to testify again to clarify the contradictions between what he said on November 26 in his initial statement and what is contained in the messages added to the case file a week ago. During his first appearance, he stated that he had "no idea" about lockdowns and that he referred the former head of Emergency Services' query to Cayetano García, the then Regional Secretary of the Presidency, because he was the person who could resolve the former minister's legal doubts. This appears in the transcript of the statement made by the former chief of staff, which ARA has already accessed.

Now, in the WhatsApp messages that Pradas forwarded, it can be read how the head of Emergencies explained to him that the situation was very complicated and that an alert was going to be sent to the population. She even details that they were considering the idea of confining the entire population of the province of Valencia, an option that Cuenca asked her not to approve under any circumstances. "Salo [Salomé Pradas], no confinement," she told him at 7:54 p.m. "Get your head out of this," she insisted at 8:15 p.m., despite the pleas of the former councilor, who explained that the emergency law would allow her to make this decision. Furthermore, he also stated that he did not discuss "the possibility of sending the ES-Alert," but messages between him and Padras reveal that the former councilor warned him that, as a result of all this, they would send an alert message.

Despite the information provided by the messages, José Manuel Cuenca has stood firm in his initial statement—failing to do so would constitute an admission of perjury—and in response to the judge's questions, he denied giving any orders, nor having done so on behalf of Carlos Mazón while the latter was having lunch for four hours with journalist Maribel Vilaplana. Cuenca's statement comes the day after the content of the messages submitted to the case by Pilar Montes, then secretary of Carlos Mazón's cabinet, became public. These messages reveal that José Manuel Cuenca was out of the city of Valencia all afternoon on the day of the storm to attend to "a party matter." In one message, Cuenca explains to Montes his difficulties in returning to Valencia. When she asks him which driver he is using, the chief of staff replies that he had gone to Xàtiva "on a party matter" and had to take a taxi because he couldn't catch a train back.