More than 50,000 people once again filled the streets of Valencia to demand Mazón's resignation.

ValenciaThousands of citizens once again filled the streets of Valencia to demand the resignation of the head of the Consell, Carlos Mazón, on the first anniversary of the October 29th strike. Although smaller than the historic mobilization of a year ago, this Saturday's march has once again clogged the city center and has gathered more than 50,000 people, according to an estimate by the Spanish government delegation.

Sometimes, the best way to determine whether a demonstration will be massive is to test its ability to break through. Today's took almost 45 minutes to get going. What was blocking it wasn't an organization hoping for a minimum turnout to save face in the eyes of public opinion, but the thousands of people who flowed into the central Plaza de Sant Agustí and blocked the head of the march. There was no way to walk, and disoriented citizens wondered where they should go.

Among them was Aurèlia Galán, a resident of Algemesí, who watched with tearful eyes the arrival of more and more people. She also watched the tractors of the farmers who helped remove the mud. "I'm excited to see the rural people who helped us so much," she explained to ARA, her voice breaking. She also painfully recalled how water denied access to her children's homes and the family bakery. "We're here because we want to be heard and because we want Mazón to resign and go to jail," she summarized.

Galán's demand for accountability from the Valencian president was echoed by the other attendees, who continued to shout slogans like "Mazón in Picassent [prison]." Many citizens also attended the march wearing T-shirts with the slogan "20:11 Neither Forgetting nor Forgiving," referring to the late hour at which the Generalitat (Catalan government) sent the ES-Alert message.

Unlike the Popular Party leaders, who have been the target of all the criticism, the protesters welcomed with applause the groups of volunteers who selflessly helped clean up homes in the days following the disaster.

The demonstration began hours after a tribute to the victims was held at a moving event that filled Valencia's Olympia Theater. Those in attendance also couldn't hold back their tears, as acknowledged by Pepe Ortiz, a member of the Valencia Provincial Firefighters Consortium, who participated on behalf of the workers who risked their lives to rescue hundreds of people from being swept away by the floodwaters.

One of the most surprising moments of the event was the speech by the former president of the Valencia Metro Victims Association, Beatriz Garrote, who expressed her solidarity and warned the families that they face a "long" struggle for justice. She also emphasized that they are facing a government that "tries to hide the truth and doesn't even represent its voters." "There will be a lot of noise around them," she predicted.

The president of the Association of Victims of the DANA 29 October 2024, Mariló Gradolí, thanked Garrote for his presence and emphasized that her association is "the mirror" in which they have looked and been inspired. She then thanked the audience that filled the theater and the more than fifty volunteers who made the event possible, which was attended by all the opposition leaders, including the general secretary of the PSPV, Diana Morant, and the former leader of Compromís, Mónica Oltra.

The common thread throughout the event was the reading of witness statements by family members who remembered those who are no longer with us. This is the case of the mother of Rubén Lima Rábago, a 33-year-old local police officer from the Torre de Valencia district who drowned while trying to get his car out of the garage. Or that of Jesús, who lost her husband. "All the living need respect, and the dead need respect," he declared, before the audience erupted in shouts of "Mazón, resign!"