Alberto Núñez Feijóo intends to avoid going in person to the Catarroja courthouse to testify before the investigating judge in the Dana case, even if his official diary for next January 9, the day he was summoned to testify, remains empty. The order procedure of the Court of Instruction number 3 of Catarroja, dated December 18, indicated this date and a very specific location in the local courts: courtroom 1-B, where witnesses testified in the proceedings, including Juan Francisco Pérez Llorca when he was spokesperson for the PP in the Regional Parliament and secretary general of the Valencian PP, shortly before replacing Carlos Mazón as president of the Generalitat. All witnesses came in person, out of deference to the victims’ loved ones in person.
However, Feijóo sent a letter a few hours before Christmas Eve in which he asked the judge – “respectfully” – to testify from his “official office” in Madrid, “by videoconference” or “another similar telematic system”. The PP leader detailed the regulations that support his request, including the Criminal Procedure Law, which exempts deputies and senators from testifying in person, allowing them to testify from “their official office or at the headquarters of the body of which they are members.” Alberto Núñez Feijóo stressed that this is the “preferential formula in the applicable legislation”.
He would be the first significant witness in the case to testify via video conference, although it is a particularly sensitive proceeding investigating 230 alleged reckless homicides. The Fatal Victims Association dana 29O, the prosecution that requested Feijóo’s testimony, represents 160 relatives of 90 deceased.
The entity’s spokesperson, Rosa Álvarez, regrets the “relentless” and “permanent” mistreatment of the PP towards the families of the deceased and criticizes that Feijóo chose precisely December 24 to send to the judge the notarial deed with his calls and WhatsApp messages with Carlos Mazón from the day of the dana, as well as the document in which he asks to testify by videoconference. “Until Christmas Eve, they did not have enough with these practically 14 months, they also had to make firewood from the fallen tree, because we are families, such a painful day, with the absences so palpable on these dates,” he said in statements to elDiario.es.
Álvarez also considers that Feijóo “lied” and constructed a “false story” to “provide an alibi for Mazón and the Consell, which the judge is dismantling”. Also missing are the WhatsApp messages sent by Alberto Núñez Feijóo to Carlos Mazón (only those from his interlocutor appeared in the notarial document sent to the magistrate).
Núñez Feijóo’s request would prevent the PP president from having to go in person to the court of Catarroja, in the Horta Sud region, precisely after the Christmas holidays and at the beginning of the political year, to testify before a judge who is holding the former PP councilor Salomé Pradas and the former regional secretary of Emergencies, Emilio Argüeso, indicted.
The spokesperson for the Association of Mortal Victims dana 29O, recalls that the magistrate specifically indicated January 9 as being “a date without sessions in Congress and which also does not interfere with the electoral campaign of Aragon”. “You go to the PP calendar and there is nothing for that day,” Rosa Álvarez remembers.
The letter sent to the court a few hours before the Christmas Eve dinner includes an email address for the Congress of Deputies, as well as a landline number, so the court can contact Feijóo.
Lawyers from the Association of Fatal Victims dana 29O requested Núñez Feijóo’s statement to explain the calls and WhatsApp messages he had with then-president Carlos Mazón on October 29, 2024, a tragic day that left 230 people dead. Feijóo said a few days after the disaster that Mazón informed him “in real time” even the day before.
The leader of the PP, in another writing sent to the court, specifies that his statements concerning the information from the day before were an error, having confused Monday October 28 with the following Tuesday. The notarized record of the calls and WhatsApp messages also confirms that it was the president of the PP himself who telephoned Carlos Mazón from 7:59 p.m., after the controversial meal of the then head of the Consell at the El Ventorro restaurant.
For her part, the entity’s spokesperson maintains that the “human tragedy” of the damage was due to a “chain of negligence” on the part of the Consell. “The people did not leave, as Feijóo said during this visit, but rather they died because of negligent management,” emphasizes Rosa Álvarez.
The “clarification of the deliberation process” in Cecopi
The statement of the opposition leader is part of the clarification of the “deliberation and decision process that was followed during the meeting” of the Integrated Operational Coordination Center (Cecopi) on the afternoon of October 29, 2024, according to the route traced by the second section of the Provincial Court of Valencia to the investigating judge.
The order of the magistrate who ordered the testimony, dated December 12, alludes to the “certainty” expressed by Feijóo in his “public demonstrations” and reproduces the sentence uttered by the popular leader a few days after the dana, during a visit to the Emergency Coordination Center of the Generalitat in Eliana: “The president of the Generalitat, since last Monday, has been informing me in real time.
“This witness could explain the comments that the President of the Generalitat could have made following the conversations with Ms. Salomé Pradas,” the resolution indicates.
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