The Catarroja judge who is investigating the criminal case for the management of the dana highlighted this Monday in a judgment that the moment when the then president Carlos Mazón at the Palau de la Generalitat that afternoon “must have been very rare.” And given the “very brief duration that could have been”, he considers that the “possibility of recovering information from the Palau cameras” and of summoning the head of the Palau services on October 29, 2024 to explain the reasons for the deletion of the images would not be relevant because it would not provide information on the possible content of the conversations related to the management of the dana, the subject of his investigation.
For this reason, Judge Nuria Ruiz Tobarra rejects the prosecutor’s request filed by Compromís regarding Mazón’s arrival at the Consell headquarters on the afternoon when floods killed 230 people in the province of Valencia. But he clearly expresses his disbelief at the official versions proposed by Mazón and his entourage, according to which the president was “working” and making “calls” in Palau (where he arrived at 6 p.m., according to what the presidency had initially revealed), after having lunch with journalist Maribel Vilaplana. Subsequently, Mazón admitted to having accompanied the communicator to the parking lot and then walking to the Consell headquarters, without ever specifying the time.
Mazón arrived at the Palau a few minutes before 8 p.m. and left shortly after for Cecopi, the organization that coordinated the emergencies, according to a witness reported to this newspaper and confirmed by two sources close to the events. He entered Cecopi at 8:28 p.m.
The judge argues: “The request to obtain the cameras would become an element of no importance, whether Mr. M made the trip from the Glorieta-Paz parking lot after finishing the conversation with Mrs. V., or whether the said witness accompanied him by car to the surroundings of the Palau, a hypothesis which, although denied by the witness, would be plausible taking into account the duration of the meal at the restaurant, the after-dinner meal and the time elapsed until payment of the parking ticket.
In another order, the magistrate asks – at the request of the accusations brought by Compromís and Acció Cultural – to the Generalitat Prosecutor’s Office if a senior official of the Consell gave verbal or written consultations on this episode of floods and ravines of October 29, 2024 which left 230 dead in the province of Valencia. Throughout the investigation it became clear, as shown in WhatsApp that the former Minister of Emergencies Salomé Pradas, accused in this affair with her number twoEmilio Argüeso, discussed with senior officials of the Presidency, the possibility of confining the population during critical hours of the dana and the doubts that this option raises among them.
Pradas wanted to request the confinement of “concerned areas” and “distance (going up to the upper floors) in some municipalities” on the day of the dana. But Carlos Mazón’s chief of staff, José Manuel Cuenca, for example, responded in writing via the messaging application: “Salomé, to confine a state of alarm is necessary, and this is decreed by the girl next to you (the government delegate, Pilar Bernabé).” The former councilor knew that no, that the emergency law contemplates this regional competence and she explained it, in the middle of the chaos, to what seemed to be the highest representative of the government of the time: “Take that out of your head, please,” Cuenca replied.
In addition, the former regional secretary of the Presidency, Cayetano García, declared on December 15, during his appearance at the Danaa Commission of Inquiry of the Congress of Deputies, that regarding the confinement, he had only recommended that Councilor Pradas, in charge of the emergency, seek the legal opinion of the Generalitat Prosecutor’s Office.
The deputy director of Emergencies of the Generalitat Valenciana, Jorge Suárez, also explained before the judge on December 17 that it was a question of confinement of the population, in relation to the risk of rupture of the Forata dam, when it was raised in Cecopi that the evacuation of the population of the surrounding municipalities was not viable. “It was at that time that other measures were put on the table to be included in a It’s the alert like the lockdown and we talked about the legal doubt about this lockdown,” Suárez said last week. That’s when Pradas said he was going to seek legal advice. This alert was ultimately rejected.
The judge asked the same body to say whether the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Generalitat had been summoned on October 29 by the then regional secretary of the Presidency of the Generalitat, Cayetano García, to issue “a legal assessment” on this emergency, as reported by the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community,
On the other hand, and at the request of the popular and private prosecution exercised by the Acció Cultural del País Valencià (ACPV), the judge agreed to ask the Directorate of Emergency Assistance and Meteorology (DAEM) of the Basque Government to present a report on the calls received on the telephone number 112 of Euskadi by reference of 112 Comunitat Valenciana that day, as well as the recordings of these calls for their future integration into the procedure.
In this same resolution, the investigating judge rejects the other procedures requested by this party linked to a telephone call and a WhatsApp message between the Lehendakari and the then president of the Generalitat Valenciana, since these contacts took place “outside the temporal moment when decisions had to be taken to safeguard the population”.
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