Mazón’s chief of staff told the judge that he had not spoken with Pradas about ES-Alert despite his messages on the

“You are informed of the ES-Alert when you receive it on your mobile phone. At no time before did I know it was going to be sent“, and when he received it, he did not call anyone”, according to the minutes of his statement as a witness on November 26 before the magistrate of Catarroja who ordered open proceedings for alleged homicides and reckless injuries.

The written account of Cuenca’s appearance was provided to the parties on Thursday, just before his second court appearance on Friday. The instructor called him back to testify after Pradas provided a notarized record of the WhatsApp messages he had exchanged with him and Mazón that tragic day.

A conversation that contradicts what was detailed in court. Cuenca also explained to Catarroja that he had some messages with the former advisor, who consulted him “on the option of confinement” because “there was a dam that risked breaking and he spoke to him about the competence, which he did not know if it was his or that of the delegation”. According to his statement, Cuenca “told him that he was a journalist” and that he should speak with the regional secretary of the Presidency at the time, Cayetano García, who could resolve this legal doubt.

However, from the messages exchanged between the two, it is clear that at 7:54 p.m. they started a debate between them, about which he said nothing in court and for which he will most likely be questioned this Friday by magistrate Nuria Ruiz. ” Hi. Don’t confine anything, please. Calm”» said Cuenca. “Things are very, very bad. Excesses throughout the province,” replied Pradas. “But confining a province is barbaric. It’s one thing to zone regions,” he insisted.

That’s when the emergency manager said, “We’re going to send a message of caution. “To everyone.” “Ask everyone to be careful. Containment of affected areas. And distance (on the floors) towards some communities,” he adds.

The chief of staff responds: “Salomé, to confine an alarm state is necessary. And this is decreed by the girl next to you”, in reference to the government delegate, Pilar Bernabé, who was actually following the meeting of the Integrated Operational Coordination Center (Cecopi) electronically.

The ES-Alert was launched at 8:11 p.m. Four minutes later, after Pradas responded that they could make do with the emergency law in hand, Cuenca insisted that the president had already arrived and that he needed to “get this out of his head”: “Calm down, man. 

“Technical management, not political”

In the report of his first appearance, it also appears that Cuenca repeatedly emphasized that “emergency management is not political, it is based on a purely technical question, a technical criterion”, so that the presidency is left out. In fact, he emphasized that they communicated with him when they wanted to speak with the president.

“Never that afternoon was he consulted on anything or his opinion.“, neither to him, nor to the president, nor to anyone, beyond what could happen in an emergency which seemed to work with the information available,” he defended.

At the same time, he justified that he did not keep WhatsApp messages with Mazón because the cell phone’s memory was full, he requested “a new cell phone with more capacity, the IT technician transferred the data to him and since he did not make backup copies, they were not kept.”