Mazón’s self-criticism: how well I did it but Sánchez’s people ruined it

The “self-criticism” that Carlos Mazón announced this Friday at the beginning of his appearance in the Valencian Las Corts was similar to what applicants for a position, when asked what their main defect is, respond with theatrical sadness: “I am too much of a perfectionist.” or “I am very demanding.” The self-criticism of the Valencian president regarding his performance before the DANA was that he did it very well, too well, but that everything failed because from the outside – see the AEMET and the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation, bodies dependent, of course, on the central government – they did it wrong. According to his story, the tragedy that left 215 dead and 16 missing was the result of a confluence of causes: the unprecedented magnitude of the natural phenomenon, poor information from state entities and “failures in the system,” in general. Everything conspired in favor of the consummation of the catastrophe. Everything, except his ineptitude and that of his Government.

I am not going to go into the list of data that Mazón provided in his marathon appearance, his lies, omissions and inaccuracies, which my colleagues at this newspaper have already dealt with wisely. What I am interested in highlighting is the audacity with which he has evaded any responsibility, being by law the person most responsible for emergency management in his community. No matter how many milongas it has, the AEMET had declared a red alert for the DANA in Valencia early in the morning of October 29 and, despite the fact that the waters reduced their flow for several hours, it maintained that maximum alert throughout the day. It is false that there was an information gap, as he stated in his appearance: in addition to the AEMET data, the General Directorate of Traffic published in its X account almost 80 notices of landslides, floods and dragged cars and the Hydrographic Confederation del Júcar sent by email at least 194 notices about DANA to the Emergency Coordination Center of the Valencian Community, as revealed by elDiario.es. The only thing missing was for someone to smack Mazón to make him react.