The system did not fail, Mazón failed

I told you last Saturday and I was not wrong. It is a universal law of Spanish politics: every great negligence on the right is always followed by a campaign of mud and propaganda to evade its responsibility. It happened with the Prestige, with the 11M, with the Yak 42, with the residences in Madrid or with the Valencia metro accident. Now it happens with the DANA tragedy, once again.

The victims don’t matter. The truth doesn’t matter. Anything goes, anything to win the small and miserable political battles of everyday life. It’s not just obscene. It’s irresponsible too.

This week, in Europe, they got to know the Popular Party a little better. And to its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Someone who – the week after Donald Trump’s victory – is capable of putting the stability of Europe at risk in order to save the unsalvageable: the reputation of Carlos Mazón.

I summarize the scenario for you, to understand it better.

Mazón could resign. Of course yes. There is no shortage of reasons: to begin with, for pure personal ethics. To be able to look in the mirror. For simple responsibility. It hasn’t and it won’t. He will know if it is worth it, what his conscience dictates, and if he can sleep with it.

Mazón will not resign and no one in his party is going to demand it from him. Not because they are happy with it, they are not. Not because they don’t know that he has no chance of resurrection. “Feijóo will support Mazón so as not to give Sánchez a victory,” as The newspaper La Razón said on its front page.

It’s that simple. It’s that hard. Feijóo does not want Mazón to resign because that would be equivalent to accepting the reality that all fairly informed Valencians already know: that it was the negligent president of the Generalitat who did it extremely badly. That it was Mazón, and only him, who maintained his agenda as if nothing was happening, after the red alert from the AEMET. That it was Mazón who, that same morning of the tragedy, criticized the University of Valencia for suspending classes. That it was Mazón who spent five hours missing that day; according to his last explanation, which comes after several lies, in a three-hour lunch with a journalist. That his government was responsible for managing that emergency and it is almost impossible to do worse.

So no, Mazón will not resign “so as not to give Sánchez a victory,” as Feijóo sees the world.

There is another reason: the power of the Generalitat. If Mazón resigns, his replacement is not automatic. A new investiture must be voted on in the Valencian Parliament and the PP does not have a sufficient majority: it depends on Vox. If Mazón falls, Feijóo knows that it is possible that this political crisis could cause an early election. And the PP is not prepared today to compete at the polls in the Valencian Community, after its incompetent management.

That is why Mazón has not resigned. That’s why he won’t resign. And that is why the Popular Party has launched a new distraction strategy. Let’s see if they get lucky and turn the score around. Let’s see if they find another culprit, in order to reduce the pressure on Mazón’s head.

There is another universal law in Spanish politics: whenever someone from the PP is in the wrong, it is someone else who pays the price.

The first person to resign from the Prestige was a PSOE deputy, for joking about the tragedy. The first to resign from Gürtel was the socialist minister Mariano Fernández Bermejo (and shortly after, Baltasar Garzón, the first judge who investigated this corruption, fell). The first to resign from Ayuso’s brother’s commissions was Pablo Casado. And the one who has the most problems today with Justice due to the fraud of Ayuso’s partner is the State Attorney General.

The precedents are very clear. And it can happen again because it is the norm, not the exception. It is the usual tactic of the right. So do not rule out that the first major political victim of the Valencian tragedy is someone without any responsibility in the negligent management of the emergency: Vice President Teresa Ribera.

Ribera’s responsibility in that emergency? None. An example is what happened this week, with the second DANA in Andalusia, Catalonia and the Valencian Community. This time, the weather warnings were heeded. People were sent home and schools in risk areas were closed. Road traffic was prohibited. Alerts were sent to mobile phones on time. And all this was done by the respective autonomous governments, not any ministry: because it is their responsibility and because it is also the autonomies that have the tools to exercise it.

If the first DANA in Valencia had been managed the same way, if those measures had been taken then, how many victims would have been avoided?

Nobody remembered Teresa Ribera neither on the Tuesday of the tragedy, nor on Wednesday, nor on Thursday… It was not until last weekend – shortly before the massive demonstration in Valencia against Mazón – when the PP began to throw mud against she.

This week, Ribera was having her hearing in the European Parliament, before her appointment as vice president and commissioner of the EU. A kind of exam that all politicians undergo before joining the European Commission, the EU government. And taking advantage of that gorge, the PP fired all its artillery against it.

“A shit show,” the international press defined that session. Stunned to see how the PP MEPs tried to muddy Ribera.

The icing on that shit cake was put by Esteban González Pons, in one of the most cynical and base statements that can be remembered.

The leader in the European Parliament of the European PP, Manfred Weber, joined this dirty play of the PP. That he took advantage of the excuse to launch an attack on his own party colleague, Ursula von der Leyen, less supportive than Weber of agreements with the extreme right.

The pact that Von der Leyen reached a few months ago with all EU governments and with the main groups in the European Parliament is the usual one in Europe: a government led by the right – to which Von der Leyen belongs – but supported by socialists and liberals. A European Commission with a conservative number 1, but with a socialist number 2: Teresa Ribera.

The pressure from Feijóo and Weber has put this future commission into question. For now, his appointment and that of the rest of the vice presidents have been delayed until November 20, when Ribera is scheduled to appear before the Congress of Deputies.

The European PP has set a condition for Ribera to stop blocking her appointment: that she undertake to resign if she is prosecuted by the DANA of Valencia.

And it is important to know this information. Teresa Ribera is today before the Supreme Court, as vice president of the Government of Spain. But if she is appointed to the European Commission, she will lose her capacity: she can be prosecuted by any judge, any court that accepts the complaint that – with certainty – the Clean Hands ultras will present.

There is an important nuance in the request: the European PP talks about her being “prosecuted”, which is not the same as charged. But even so, accepting that condition with the way in which some judges operate today in Spain is almost suicidal.

There is another problem for Ribera. If the European PP finally manages to force an individual vote for each vice presidency, the vote will be secret. And in the European Parliament the right and the extreme right add up to more than the left and the liberals. The risk that Ribera thus becomes DANA’s first political victim is, therefore, quite high.

But the consequences for Europe are even greater than what losing such a position means for Spain. Taking down Ribera also means dynamiting the pact that bordered the anti-European extreme right. All this, on the eve of Donald Trump’s coming to power in the US. That is what the PP is putting at risk with this trick.

If the European Parliament vetoes Ribera as vice president of the commission, Feijóo will be able to sell in Spain that it is Europe that condemns her: who considers that she is the main person responsible, and not Carlos Mazón.

A Carlos Mazón who this Friday, finally, appeared before the Valencian Courts. Where he lied openly, to avoid his responsibility.

In this appearance, Mazón thanked the king, the Community of Madrid and even chef José Andrés for their help. Not so to the Government of Spain. Could it be that the Cercanías, the high speed or the AP7, have taken care of themselves.

But his most terrible phrase was when he made his great diagnosis: “The entire system failed,” says Mazón. And not. That’s not what happened.

What failed that tragic Tuesday, October 29, was not the system: it was the government of the Generalitat Valenciana. Starting with its president, who was irresponsibly missing during key hours.

I’ll leave it here for today. Thanks for reading me. Thank you for your support of elDiario.es

A hug,

Ignacio School

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