José Manuel Cuenca, chief of staff and right-hand man of the former president of the Generalitat Valenciana Carlos Mazon, will testify again as a witness before the court of Catarroja (Valencia) which is investigating the dana, the disaster which left 230 dead in Valencia in 2024. Magistrate Nuria Ruiz Tobarra, responsible for investigating the case, accepted this Tuesday her second appearance in Cuenca in two weeks. It will be next Friday, according to a resolution communicated to the parties.
The instructor decides on Cuenca’s new visit to the court, which she already announced on the 26th, after analyzing the WhatsApp messages provided last Friday by the main person investigated in the case: the former Minister of Justice and Interior, Salomé Pradas. The exchange of communications between this former leader and Mazón’s advisor reveals that the Presidency had been processing information on the seriousness of the damage since noon on the day of the disaster. And that Cuenca did not play a secondary role, but rather gave instructions to Pradas, the main person responsible for the emergency, on how to manage the crisis. “Salo, please don’t confine anything. Calm down,” he told her at 7:54 p.m., 17 minutes before Cecopi – the Generalitat body that managed the outpouring – sent the It’s the alertthe massive message on cell phones to inform the population of the extent of the misfortune. A notification came when at least 155 missing people had died. And that, the judge said, became the cornerstone of the investigation because if the information had been sent sooner, lives would have been saved.
“In view of the messages from What’s new ensured by the defense of the accused Salomé Pradas (…) summon again and as soon as possible the witness José Manuel Cuenca”, agrees the instructor. To listen again to the former advisor of Mazón, the magistrate suspended the testimony of a witness scheduled for this Friday.
During his first appearance, during which, as a witness, he had an obligation to tell the truth, the former advisor admitted to the instructor that he did not keep messages from the day of the storm on his phone. He deleted them. “My phone was full, and last July I made a change. I don’t have a backup. It’s been nine or 12 months WhatsApp lost,” he said.
The summons from Cuenca occurred in the context of the hearing of the appearances of the hard core of Mazón after a change of criteria imposed in the investigation by the Provincial Court of Valencia. The court forced instructor Ruiz Tobarra to call as witnesses the advisors and senior officials with whom the former president communicated on the day of the misfortune, when Mazón enjoyed an almost four-hour lunch at the El Ventorro restaurant with journalist Maribel Vilaplana. One of the witnesses who paraded before the instructor was the current head of the Consell, Juanfran Pérez Llorca, who on the day of the dana, October 29, 2024.
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