José Manuel Cuenca, regional secretary of the Presidency cabinet and interim president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Carlos Mazón, assured on Wednesday in the court of Catarroja (Valencia) which is investigating the dana – the catastrophe that caused 229 deaths in 2024 in Valencia – that on the day of the disaster the president had not thought of going to Cecopi, the body that coordinated the crisis, at 6pm. and admitted that he did not save the WhatsApp messages he exchanged with Mazón on the day of the tragedy. This is what sources present in their statement told EL PAÍS.
“At no point did he think that the president went to Cecopi. Former Justice and Interior Minister Salomé Pradas (the main suspect in the case) kept us updated. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The forecast was that the storm would pass by 6 p.m. I didn’t note on the agenda that the president I could go to Cecopi,” he revealed.
When Mazón’s right-hand man excluded his boss from addressing the body that coordinated the tragedy, the president was having dinner at the El Ventorro restaurant with the journalist Maribel Vilaplana. And more than an hour and a half had passed since the Poyo ravine, at the origin of the tragedy, overflowed at the peak of its birth, in cities such as Chiva and Cheste.
On the afternoon of the storm, Mazón’s advisor was in Xàtiva. “Him president mand called at 7.41pm I was trying to get back to Valencia. He told me that, when I arrived in the city, I had to go to L’Eliana (headquarters of Cecopi), that he would go there “because there was a big problem with the subway”, he indicated.
Mazón, according to the witness, alerted him to this information after speaking with the regional secretary of Infrastructure and Transport, Javier Sendra, directly responsible for MetroValencia, whose command center in Paiporta was already flooded at that time.
Cuenca appeared before Judge Nuria Ruiz Tobarra as a witness, a condition that requires him to tell the truth. In his speech he acknowledged that he prepares the agenda of the politician he lives with.
Loss of “WhatsApp”
The witness admitted that he did not save WhatsApp messages from the day of the tragedy. “My phone was full and, in July, I made a change. I have no backup. There are nine or 12 months of whatsapp lost,” he pointed.
As part of another six summonses from Mazón’s hard core, Catarroja’s instructor agreed with Cuenca’s statement after analyzing her flow of calls on the day of the disaster with the main defendant in the case, the former Minister of Justice and Interior and emergency manager, Salomé Pradas. The former manager communicated by telephone with Mazón’s right-hand man at 12.53pm. after hydrological alerts were decreed in the Magro river – which caused chaos in Utiel and Requena – and in the Poyo ravine, the ravine that caused the tragedy after overflowing from 4.40pm. at the height of Chiva and Cheste and subsequently flooded cities such as Paiporta or Catarroja, where the damage caused 55 and 25 deaths respectively.
Cuenca has hung Pradas. And later, both re-established communication at 1.19pm. and 6.48pm This last call was recorded nine minutes before the interim president began an enigmatic 37-minute period of incommunication (6.57pm-7.34pm) in which the then head of the Consell was incommunicado (not answering calls). And it coincides with the moment that Mazón spent with the journalist Maribel Vilaplana after having lunch for almost four hours (3:00-6:45 pm) in the central El Ventorro restaurant in Valencia.
