The chief of staff of former Valencian President Carlos Mazón, José Manuel Cuenca, will testify again as a witness before the investigating judge in the criminal case on the management of the Dana disaster of October 29, 2024.
The magistrate of Catarroja is back … to summon him, two weeks after his first appearance, “in view of the WhatsApp messages provided by the defense of the accused Salomé Pradas” and “as soon as possible”.
The former regional secretary of the Office of the President and Communications of the Generalitat will have to appear in court again next Friday at half past nine in the morning.
As reported by ABC, the report that Pradas, former advisor in charge of emergencies, gave to the instructor along with the written communications he had with Mazón and Cuenca that tragic day revealed aspects unknown until now and which the latter did not mention in his statement.
Questioned by them, the former chief of staff of the popular leader claimed that he had not kept the WhatsApp messages because in July he had changed his mobile phone and had not made a backup.
“We are informed of a deceased person in Utiel,” Pradas said in Cuenca at 4:38 p.m. The same one who, according to Pradas, had asked him not to disturb Mazón around 2 p.m. At 4:43 p.m., Cuenca – without referring to the deceased – transmitted a message to Pradas from the “presi” of the El Ventorro restaurant: “At 7 p.m. we go to 112.” The Integrated Operational Coordination Center (Cecopi), the organization which managed the crisis, met there.
However, Mazón continued the conversation after dinner and then accompanied the journalist he was having lunch with to a parking lot. Maribel Vilaplana left the parking lot at 7:48 p.m. and the former president only arrived at the Eliana building at 8:28 p.m., seventeen minutes after the launch of the ES-Alert. The PP baron defended that he had no confirmation of the deaths before midnight.
The last message Pradas sent to Mazón that day was at 2:11 p.m.: “Things are getting complicated in Utiel.” In fact, there was little left to mobilize the EMU. Then they only communicated through calls. An hour earlier, he had told her: “I am in communication with Pilar Bernabé. What is most worrying currently is the area of Ribera Alta, Barranco Pollo (sic) and Río Magro, we have just decreed a hydrological alert in the municipalities of this area. We have reinforced 112, we have moved the forest firefighters, the Valencia consortium is also in top form. “We will also urge caution due to the maritime storm.” Mazón replied: “Cojonudo.”
It was late in the afternoon that tension rose in the exchange of messages between Pradas and Cuenca. At 7:54 p.m., the now former chief of staff said: “Please don’t confine anything. Calm.” Pradas warns him that things are “very, very bad,” with “excesses throughout the province,” but Cuenca responds that “it’s barbaric” and that “zoning” is another matter.
It was then that the emergency manager informed him that a “precautionary” message would be sent to all regions to “request caution from all”, the “containment” of the affected areas and “the removal (removal of plants) in some municipalities”. “To confine, you need a state of alarm” on the part of the Government, he replies.
At 8:15 p.m., after Pradas points out that they can do it with the emergency law, Cuenca tells him that Mazón is coming and “to get that out of his head”: “Calm down, man.” The ES-Alert had been launched four minutes earlier.
At 8:27 p.m., Pradas sent him an audio: “We have asked to avoid travel throughout the province of Valencia and we are going to decree confinement in Ribera Alta, Baja, Horta Sud and Hoya de Buñol. And in these areas we will ask that they be raised to higher floors in municipalities and in houses near rivers and ravines.
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