“If I am not able to lead the recovery, I will take responsibility and will not run for re-election.” We had to wait until four thirty in the afternoon, in the second turn of the intervention. president of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, to hear this phrase with which he has tried to tie down his political future. After more than two weeks in which the shock initial situation quickly gave way to pressure, Mazón is determined to hold on—as this newspaper reported—with reconstruction as an alibi.
If Genoa expected a significant movement, it has only found, for now, the announcement of a commission of investigation and a remodeling of the Government: a new Minister of the Interior and Emergencies (previously they were in the same portfolio as Justice) and a vice-presidency and “recovery” counseling.
“That is and will be my commitment. That is my commitment to all Valencians and that is my responsibility,” he said this Friday during his appearance at Les Cortes Valencianes. A key appointment for Mazón and for the Popular Party as a whole, which had set high expectations. Alberto Núñez Feijóo promised a day before that “many people” would feel “partially comforted by the political class” after listening to the explanations of the president Valencian. He also said that he would be self-critical, although what Mazón really did was distribute blame.
In his initial speech – more than sixty pages and two and a half hours of intervention – he pointed out above all to the Hydrographic Confederation and the AEMET, following the path that Feijóo showed him from the first day. Mazón defended that the information they had on October 29 was “fragmented, inaccurate and late”; “that it is legitimate to ask whether the measurement and warning systems offered all possible guarantees”; and that “everything was executed as it had always been done,” but that DANA “exceeded” the protocols “because it also demonstrated that our protection and alert systems have cracks.” He justified that he maintained his agenda that day being “fully aware of how the situation was” and trusting in the presence of Minister Salomé Pradas at the Cecopi meeting and did not give any explanations for his absence of more than three hours at a meal with a journalist, held incommunicado according to some media outlets.
Mazon He even said that the ES-Alert civil protection system “was not planned”when it has been since 2023 and has been used dozens of times already in Spain. Thus, the Valencian baron of the PP blamed everyone
—even making the anti-political discourse his own, “the entire system”— to exonerate himself, while claiming to be self-critical. It was not what his party was expecting him to do: they had asked him for another “attitude.”
Then came the plenary recess. An hour to eat from which the president of the Generalitat returned with a message that calmed the internal pressure: “If I am not capable of leading the recovery that Valencia needs, I will assume the consequences politically by not running for re-election.” The opposition, Compromís and PSPV-PSOE, asked him to resign, but Mazón will not let go of his position.
“I don’t cling to any position, I cling to my responsibility by not clinging to it, I simply assume it (…) I truly believe deeply in assuming that responsibility, I believe that there are not too many hands, we all need to take a step go ahead,” he explained in the afternoon. He president He did not want to talk about his future in the initial intervention and left it for the afternoon. The change in attitude was evident. Dozens of citizens gathered at the gates of Les Corts calling for his resignation.
A reason to justify your permanence
The PP believes it has given a good reason to justify Mazón’s permanence in office and no one now sees any other way out other than letting him remain in charge. “No one would want to occupy that place now,” sources justify popular to Public. Thus, the first to link the future of president Valencian to the reconstruction was the baron with the most weight in the PP, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla: “You have to continue working until there is a definitive recovery,” he said this Thursday in an interview in Zero Wave.
A day later, an hour before Mazón gave explanations in the regional parliament, it was Feijóo who said that the president He was going to “commit” to managing a reconstruction that “will be a long, very hard” and “huge job in which there will no longer be room for the mistakes” that they have made in the management.
Mazón is buying time and the PP will try to compete with Pedro Sánchez for the attribution of responsibilities in the recovery work in the affected areas. As a political asset, the president of the Generalitat remains just as “burned out” – this is how a powerful popular baron describes him – and the party sees him as having “no way out.” For Génova, what is at stake in the coming months in Valencia is, above all, the management image of the PPwhich needs the votes of that community to bring Feijóo to La Moncloa.
A difficult exam in summer 2025
Regarding Mazón’s future, although he has made it clear that they intend to last the entire legislature, until 2027, next year he could face a decisive exam. In compliance with the statutes of the PP, the XVI Congress of the PP should be held in País Valencià in the summer of 2025, where the party’s presidency is voted on. The last congress, in which they elected the leader of the formation thanks to the sponsorship of the then general secretary of the PP, Teodoro García Egea, was in July 2021. Will he be able to compete for the leadership of the Valencian PP in just over six months?
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