The PP reorients its strategy and this Saturday it came out openly and with new arguments in defense of the management of the dana crisis by the president of the Valencian Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, during the day of the passage of the storm. He does so a day after it was learned that Mazón was eating in a central restaurant in Valencia until 6:00 p.m. At 3:00 p.m. the situation was already collapsing, with the Aemet rain alert at red level, emergency calls had multiplied, there were floods in some municipalities and there was even a missing person. Génova is now trying to justify Mazón's delay in joining the Cecopi on Tuesday the 29th—the meeting began at 5:00 p.m. and he arrived around 7:00 p.m.—by focusing on the institutional trips of members of the central government that day: “Pedro Sánchez was in India and Teresa Ribera in Brussels,” the popular spokesperson, Miguel Ángel Tellado, recriminated this Saturday.
Mazón himself has tried to put the responsibility on the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation and its ultimate manager, Minister Teresa Ribera. According to his version, only after 7:00 p.m., when he was already at Cecopi, did the Confederation communicate that the situation had become dire. There “everything changed,” Mazón said. “Everything changes after seven. It's not that it was an ordinary day, it was a day in which we were pending the evolution of the rains. But when the Confederation tells us that all this hydrological revolution, all that channel had overflowed, that's when everything changes,” Mazón expressed on the regional channel À Punt, in the Emergency Center. “Until that moment, we were punctually informed, with a working lunch, from the Generalitat office we were punctually informed. Until it is communicated here, that is what really marks the before and after,” he added.
In another subsequent appearance to the media, Mazón added: “Aemet itself spoke of a maximum of 180 [litros por metro cuadrado]. “That would have been a normal storm.” The president thus ignored the enormous number of alerts that were already arriving at lunchtime from different organizations. At 5:56 p.m., the Júcar Confederation had reported that the Forata reservoir had begun to flow and that flows greater than 1,000 cubic meters per second were expected in the Magro River. Furthermore, at 6:30 p.m., with The Cecopi meeting resumed after a break, the representatives of the Confederation spoke for the first time about the possibility of sending the alert to cell phones to warn the population, according to Government sources. “Everyone was in their position,” he continued, alluding to the constitution of Cecopi from 5:00 p.m.
From Ferrol, the PP has launched this Saturday its sharpest tongue, the parliamentary spokesperson, Miguel Tellado, as a battering ram to support Mazón's version. “Much has been said about the agenda of the president of the Generalitat, when the person sitting in the Cecopi was the autonomous government,” said Tellado from Ferrol (Galicia), following the argument of the Generalitat, which emphasizes that it was not breached. the regulations. According to the regional law, whoever presides over Cecopi is responsible for the branch. In this case, the Minister of Justice and Interior, Salomé Pradas, who was present. “And the one who was very far away was the Government of Spain: Sánchez in India, Ribera in Brussels and in Paris, and the number ofs of Ribera, in Colombia”, Tellado has charged to relieve the popular baron of responsibility. “Mazón was in Valencia,” he boasted. Tellado has continued to attack Ribera saying that “she has not been up to the task” and that she is “more worried about being a European commissioner than about meeting her responsibilities.” The popular spokesperson has announced that Mazón will appear next week before the Valencian Cortes to “give an account” of the management of the crisis. In another intervention this Saturday, the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, avoided entering into controversies because “the Government is focused on responding to the needs of the people.” “One hundred percent of our energy is for reconstruction [de las zonas afectadas]”, added Teresa Ribera.
Sources from the PSOE, however, do categorically deny the PP's accusations and assure that the vice president was “working and contactable at all times.” After an agenda “dispatching matters related to her appointment as executive vice president and commissioner, she continued directing the actions of the Ministry, pending the evolution of the dana and in contact with the other ministries alerted to the situation,” continue the same sources, confirming that That same night, October 29, Ribera participated electronically in the crisis committee. And not only that, but he “advanced” his return to Madrid to seven in the morning on the 30th.
Ribera also revealed this Friday on the SER network program Hour 25 who called Carlos Mazón four times during the Cecopi meeting on October 29 between 7:30 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. After three unanswered calls, on the fourth, she spoke to him: “He told me something like: 'Everything was going well, but this afternoon everything was rushed. Excuse me, I'll call you in 10 minutes, I can't talk right now.' And logically he didn't call me again, which I understand perfectly,” said Ribera. After these statements by the vice president, Mazón published on the social network X a message that Ribera had sent him at 8:20 p.m. offering help. “Enough of the manipulations. This SMS, at 8:20 p.m. after sending the alert and without coverage at CECOPI. “That's what happened,” he wrote. president.
Mazón, according to sources in his cabinet, at lunchtime was in a restaurant with journalist Maribel Vilaplana to offer her the direction of the regional television channel À Punt. However, and even though he is aware of this fact, Tellado has once again attacked the PSOE for not having suspended the plenary session on RTVE in Congress, but did suspend the control session. “Spanish society has reacted with unity to the catastrophe that I wish had been reflected on the political level. That cannot be so, because the attitude of the Socialist Party was different. The PSOE put its partisan interests above any other issue. While we asked for the total suspension of the plenary session, what the Socialist Party wanted was the takeover of the Spanish Radio and Television Council,” he recriminated.
The Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, has assured from the town of Bétera that the Armed Forces will be present in Valencia “as long as necessary.” In the face of all the media noise, he has asked for unity and solidarity with all citizens who are currently suffering the consequences of a devastating damage that has left more than 200 dead. Robles recalled that on the ground there are 8,500 troops from the three armies, the UME and the Royal Guard, but that “it is not about numbers, but about coordination, command and control and capabilities.”
“There are no words or consolation in these cases, but [los afectados] “They can count on the Armed Forces,” said the minister, who has insisted on several occasions that the military will be present “as long as it is necessary.” The minister wanted to convey to the victims' families that the Army has tried to give the victims “the dignity and respect they deserve.”
