Mazón lied in Les Corts: official data reveal that there was no traffic jam that delayed his arrival to the emergency meeting by DANA

“The trip was not easy. The bad weather, as is normal in these situations, produced heavy traffic and lengthened the journey until I reached l’Eliana.” The president of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, maintained in his official appearance in Les Corts Valencianes – on November 15 to explain his management of DANA – that on the day of the tragedy he had difficulties reaching Cecopi, the Operational Coordination Center Integrated, which was held in a town 19 kilometers in a straight line from the Palau de la Generalitat and where Mazón was supposedly located.

The bad weather and the state of the roads, according to the version given by the president in parliament, would have further delayed his attendance at the key meeting, in which his dismissed minister Salomé Pradas was there from five in the afternoon while he ate with a journalist to talk about extemporaneous topics. But the weather was not bad, nor was it raining, nor were there traffic jams on the road that leads to Cecopi.

Pradas, according to the Presidency of the Generalitat’s own version, called Mazón at 6:45 p.m. and gave him background information on the seriousness of the situation. At that moment, always according to his version, he would have left his office for l’Eliana, encountering difficulties in reaching the emergency command center, which he arrived after 7:30 p.m., with the floods devastating the province, deaths and people. trying to survive on hoods and roofs.

Official data from the Department of Infrastructure of its own Consell, as well as the records of the General Directorate of Traffic (DGT), show that on the afternoon of October 29, when the Barranco del Poyo and the Magro River overflowed, in the On the road that was to take the president from his office to the epicenter of the administration, there were no incidents and traffic was completely normal, like any day. The CV-35 (known as Pista de Ademuz) is north of the Poyo ravine, in an area that has not been affected by the floods.

According to the official record of Cegesem, the regional road management body of the Department of Infrastructure, there was no relevant problem at that point that afternoon. The records do record an incident, but it was at 10:02 p.m., due to a flood at kilometer 85, near Titaguas, far beyond where the Cecopi was being held and with Mazón already in the room and appearing for the first time. once before the cameras.

The usual traffic

The capacity and incident data from the DGT confirm the same. On the afternoon of October 29, the road that goes from the city of Valencia to the Integrated Operational Coordination Center did not present any anomaly, “the usual traffic of any day,” confirmed official sources after consulting the technical records. The usual thing on that road can be small delays of between 3 and 5 kilometers during rush hours. In terms of time, from the Palau to 112 L’Eliana it takes about 25 minutes by road.

Furthermore, as is public and known, in the capital that “bad weather” that the president claimed could have complicated his arrival did not exist either, because it did not even rain in the city or in the metropolitan belt, nor in the cities of l’ Horta Sud that were devastated. Except for some isolated showers during the morning, October 29, 2024 will be remembered for the enormous amounts that fell in the headwaters of the Magro and Poyo rivers, while the capital and its surroundings lived normally.

If the president arrived after 7:30 p.m. at the Cecopi de l’Eliana, according to eyewitnesses, it means that, if he was at the Palau de la Generalitat, he left after 7 p.m., with a private car ride, that he does not have an escort nor does he have the possibility of making way for him, in which case it could even take less time. What Carlos Mazón did between 6 p.m., when he finished lunch with journalist Maribel Vilaplana, and 7:10 p.m., when he had to leave his office, remains a mystery.

Various versions and time schedules have been maintained by the Presidency (private lunch, work lunch, private work lunch), but the latest version is that from the El Ventorro restaurant he went to work in his office at the Palau de la Generalitat, in the old part of the city. There he supposedly received a call from Minister Pradas, who has been dismissed and has not publicly specified whether she tried to contact him before and whether or not she was able to locate him.

Days after DANA, it was learned that on the day of the floods, at 6:28 p.m., the president called the mayor of Cullera and told him, according to the version of the first mayor, Jordi Mayor: “I am here at a meeting and your name has come up.” ”. Who the president of the Generalitat was with or where remains another mystery. It was probably not with his Chief of Staff, José Manuel Cuenca, who was also without coverage on a trip for private business in Xàtiva, as he later justified. Mayor publicly stated that, in this call, Mazón did not even talk to him about the DANA or the Forata dam, which it was feared could break: “I don’t know what state it was in, but it was not a state of emergency.” It is also not known who brought up the mayor’s name before the president at that hour of his agenda that has been left in the dark.

elDiario.es has contacted the Presidency of the Generalitat to obtain an explanation, but they have declined to make any statements: “We are not going to comment on what we have already explained.”