Sánchez requires the PSOE to avoid partisan calculation in the Valencian crisis to legitimize the Government’s action

Neither self-criticism nor empathy nor forgiveness. Carlos Mazón appeared in the Valencian Courts on Friday, when 20 days had already passed since the tragedy caused by DANA in which more than 200 people died. And he did it to shift the blame onto “the system.” Above all the system. Without assuming the responsibility that corresponded to him. He turned the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation (CHJ) into a scapegoat with lies, inaccuracies and manipulations by accusing the entity of subjecting the Generalitat to an information blackout “of two and a half hours” that never existed.

Call it a hoax, lie or misinformation because the CHJ sent up to 194 notices related to the floods to the Emergency Coordination Center of the Valencian Community. The emails, provided by this newspaper, include alerts about the increase in rain in Chiva, the head of the El Poyo ravine that caused much of the catastrophe. Sixty of these messages were sent while Mazón was eating and sharing a meal with a journalist in a restaurant to offer her the direction of regional television. Or so he said in the umpteenth version about his disappearance during critical hours.

Neither was the catastrophe inevitable, as Mazón came to suggest, nor did all the protocols fail, as demonstrated by the University, several companies and some city councils, which did heed the alerts and thus safely prevented the number of deaths from increasing. The only one who was not in his place and who also ignored the alerts was the head of the Generalitat. The one who has said it loudest and clearest these days has been his predecessor at the head of the presidency of the Consell, the socialist Ximo Puig, for whom “the protocols and the system did not fail, the management failed.” Something that the Sánchez Government has not yet said categorically, despite the fact that Mazón has broken the strategy with which in the first days he staged an exercise of goodrollism with the Government of Spain, which at no time was followed by either Feijóo or the national leadership of the party.

Génova – which from day one has considered Mazón amortized – and the president of the Generalitat are now only united by the determination to pin the blame on Teresa Ribera and the breaking of all institutional and moral codes, as demonstrated by this week in Brussels by muddying the appointment of the vice president as European commissioner even at the risk of breaking the consensus established in the Euro parliament for the configuration of the new college of commissioners.

For days, some voices had been heard in the socialist ranks that, although lukewarm, asked for greater forcefulness from the Government to defend itself from the attacks from the right, but in La Moncloa they are not in the business of pouring more mud into the swamp in which the PP has turned this crisis into mud and death. “We will continue with the containment of criticism,” says a minister who believes that it is the Valencians, and not the PSOE, who seem to have already declared “that Mazón’s grace period is over.” That does not mean that on Friday, after listening to the Valencian president in the Corts, a turning point was marked in the socialist strategy with which to distinguish itself from the PP and also from Compromís.

In the words of another minister who is part of the team that coordinates the reconstruction of the affected areas, “not even the hyperventilation of those from Feijóo helps in this crisis, in which everything must be done so that people recover their lives as soon as possible, nor neither the resignation of the president of the Consell that Baldoví demands”. A resignation from Mazón would not change anything because, for those of Pedro Sánchez, the PP would continue in the hands of Vox and climate change denialism, so the Consell would be the same and in the event of an emergency it would act the same again.

Nor does the Government consider it appropriate to call an election in the midst of the reconstruction work and hence, through the words of the general secretary of the PSPV and Minister of Science, Diana Morant, the socialists have pointed out as a temporary solution what they call “a responsible response, that responds to the climate emergency and that is not led by a negligent and incompetent president.” The solution is for the PP to dismiss Mazón and appoint a transitional president, who would have the support of the socialists in exchange for three conditions: that he be appointed on a temporary basis and have a technical profile, that he will be responsible for the recovery and reconstruction a collaborative task in which all the parliamentary groups of the Corts participate, except Vox, and that elections are called in 2025.

If Feijóo’s PP and the Government agree on something, it is that Mazón is “incapacitated” to continue. The difference is that the socialists verbalize it and the popular ones make it explicit only behind the scenes and without microphones. “We want real solutions and not political calculations,” they emphasize from the office of the President of the Government, who has given precise instructions so that his people can only deal with the reconstruction work and “not waste a second in responding to the provocations of the right more than with data and facts such as those disseminated from the X account @infoDanaGob, where the measures adopted by the Government of Spain are posted daily, both in terms of infrastructure and public aid and the way to access the same ones.

The Socialists’ proposal to offer Feijóo a way out to remove Mazón means, according to Sánchez’s team, being “rise to the occasion”, despite the political cost that they know that giving the votes to the PP would have among their electorate. change of nothing. Neither armchairs nor counterparts. Sánchez has imposed on the PSOE to avoid partisan calculation in the face of this crisis to legitimize the Government’s action and not deviate even one millimeter from the reconstruction work, care for the victims and the drip-feed of public service information. Not everyone understands the slogan and neither does the role that the PSPV and its general secretary, Diana Morant, have played in the last two weeks. The Minister of Science and Universities is also criticized for having been absent from the political response and also from ground zero of the catastrophe. Quite the opposite of what the Government delegate in Valencia, Pilar Bernabé, has done, who has been seen daily on the ground and alongside the mayors of the most affected towns. In their defense, those who criticize Morant believe that the minister, who should not have left Valencia since the day of the catastrophe, follows the guideline that La Moncloa has written for her and that, for some Valencians, “it is not entirely correct.” .

The PSPV leaders are much more explicit and forceful against Mazón than the script established from Madrid indicates. “In a homeless man, a guy who never took seriously the position he holds” who on Friday, “instead of getting into the rag of his lies and manipulations, should not have been allowed to leave the framework of a statement and a single question: you did not notify the population when appropriate and explain the truth of where you were,” says one Valencian socialist indignantly.

Whoever speaks this way agrees in the analysis with former president Puig, who in conversation with this newspaper, defends that the lack of explanations and the entire appearance of Mazón in the Corts have been “an enormous lack of humanity and democratic courage” and that “Now he cannot ask Valencians for confidence in the face of reconstruction when he completely lacks the moral authority to speak with unions, businessmen and civil society and forge the slightest consensus for the new stage.”

Those who, in the words of the former president, “never took the emergency seriously, cannot also shift the blame onto everyone else and not assume responsibility. “It was not the Government or the UME, nor the AEMET, nor the CHJ, he was just not where he should be.”