After the resignation, the commissions. One year after the Dana tragedy, Carlos Mazón, in office after announcing two weeks ago his departure from the position of president of the Valencian Community, finds himself these days dealing with a political calendar with several investigative commissions trying to shed light on his political actions on the afternoon of October 29, 2024. This Monday, barring last minute surprises – by law, he is obliged to attend unless there is a justified reason, such as a medical leave – he is summoned to 10.30am at the Congress of Deputies.
Mazón will arrive in Madrid six days after participating in another commission on dana, this time in Les Corts Valencianes, where he did not answer any of the questions from the opposition (PSOE and Compromís). And in fact he maintained the same speech that he reiterated throughout the year. The interim president read his speech during the first 23 minutes. He ignored the issues raised by his political rivals and went on the attack, stressing that the Generalitat Valenciana had taken responsibility, including its own resignation, while the central government had none. The format was also very convenient for Mazón, who avoided confrontation with the rest of the deputies and the regional spokesmen.
This time it will be different. If in the Valencian Parliament – where PP and Vox control the times by obtaining the majority in Parliament and, therefore, in the commission – in the Chamber it will be the opposite: the government parties in Spain (PSOE, Sumar, Podemos and independentists) constitute the majority and have established a direct question of 20 minutes for each parliamentary group. This means that Mazón and the spokespersons of the different political parties will have a discussion similar to what Pedro Sánchez had in the commission of The Koldo case in the Senate. However, there will be no initial intervention.
On Monday the attention of the national media will return to the Chamber, while in Valencia the replacement of Mazón as president is being negotiated between the popular right and the far right. The Valencian interim president – Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s main open wound for a year – will not be accompanied by the popular leadership in his declaration to Congress.
Feijóo and other members of the PP steering committee will meet weekly at the party’s national headquarters, two kilometers away. This will make it easier for Génova to avoid a controversial photo between the top management and the still Valencian leader.
However, although Feijóo announced that Mazón would be present at the three commissions to which he had been summoned (Valencian Cortes, Congress and Senate), the prediction is that Mazón will conclude his interventions in the parliamentary commissions this Monday.
The PP spokesperson in the Senate, Alicia García, assured last Thursday that Mazón’s nomination to the Upper House is not expected in the short term. “He’s on the buddy list, that’s what he wanted. And we haven’t set a date yet,” he said. Since the birth of the Dana commission in the Senate in January this year, those who have attended its sessions have mainly been experts, academics and technicians. Almost no political position.
The People’s Party created the Dana commission in the Senate to focus on the “responsibility of the central administration” in managing the tragedy. But for the moment they did not want to set a date for the appearance of any member of the government. Not even the Government delegate in Valencia, Pilar Bernabé, nor the former Minister of Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, nor the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez.
Thus, Mazón presents himself to Congress this Monday to try to clarify what he did on the afternoon of October 29, 2025, where there are still gaps to answer, such as what he did after eating at the El Ventorro restaurant with the journalist Maribel Vilaplana
“Neither my future nor my actions have been relevant. I do not intend to do so,” he said in the commission of the Valencian Cortes. “I have stopped being an excuse for those who have not intervened for a long time. I have listened to the voices of the experts and they all tell us that phenomena like dana will happen again. It is up to you to find the solutions. It is not the same to manage an emergency in which 280 liters are expected as another in which 780 liters fall. We Valencians deserve to be prepared.” However, there is no trace of the key questions.
