For a year now, the residents of Valencia and surrounding areas have been calling for his resignation, but on Monday morning Valencian regional president Carlos Mazón concluded that he can no longer stay in office. “I can’t do it anymore,” he said in a statement which he read in the Palau de la Generalitat, which houses the Valencian government. Mazón heads the government of the autonomous community of Valencia. “I made mistakes and I will live with them for the rest of my life, but none of those mistakes were politically motivated.”
Mazón, 51, has been under heavy fire for months for his role in the floods in Valencia on October 29 last year, which killed 229 people. For example, shortly after taking office in 2023, he abolished the coordinating body for disaster relief. And while the meteorological institute AEMET had issued a code red at 7:30 am that morning, the regional president enjoyed an hour-long lunch with a journalist.
It was only at 8:11 p.m. that a warning text message with concrete advice was sent to all residents of the region, after which Mazón arrived at the crisis center. By then the water was already swirling through the streets of the southern suburbs of Valencia dozens of deaths already fallen.
“I should have had the political foresight to cancel my appointments, but I made the mistake that day of sticking to my schedule,” Mazón acknowledged Monday morning. He also tried to explain his actions: he said it was unthinkable that the Poyo Gorge, the area with the worst flooding, “would turn from an arid environment into a death trap within a few hours.”
His statement was an admission of guilt and a strong attack on national politics. Mazón said Valencia had to carry out the rescue and recovery operation itself, without support from the national government. “We wanted help, we asked for it, and we never got it.”
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‘You belong in prison’
Residents of Valencia and many politicians believe that Mazón should have drawn his conclusions much earlier. More than a week after the floods, 130,000 Spaniards took to the streets to demand his resignation. A year later, at least 50,000 demonstrators did the same. Out a recent poll it turned out that 75 percent of Valencians thought Mazón should resign.
The Valencians made no secret of this opinion. At the ceremonial state funeral for all the victims, organized exactly one year after the deadly flood, Mazón was booed. “Murderer”, “coward” and “you belong in prison”, he was shouted at.
According to the regional president, who has been active in the politics of his birthplace Alicante and later in Valencia since 2003, there was previously no room to reflect on his role in the flood drama. “Faced with such a serious situation, talking about my personal circumstances seemed frivolous,” Mazón said. “Now that the first anniversary of our worst tragedy has passed, I have decided to take a personal look back.”
Now that the first anniversary of our worst tragedy has passed, I’ve decided to take a personal look back as well
Yet the timing of his resignation cannot be separated from other developments. First, Mazón spoke several times by phone on Sunday with Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the national leader of his party, the center-right Partido Popular. According to the Spanish newspaper El Pais Mazón wanted to stay on, promising that he would not stand for election in the next elections. Feijóo would not have been in favor of that solution. Although the party leader supported Mazón last year, it is becoming increasingly clear that this support is damaging confidence in Feijóo’s leadership.
And this Monday, Maribel Vilaplana, the journalist with whom Mazón had lunch, must appear in court to testify in the investigation into the actions of the regional government. She declared this weekend all that her lunch with the president lasted from 3 p.m. to 6:30 or 6:45 p.m. Halfway through, Mazón reportedly received several phone calls. The journalist says that Mazón did not tell her about the content of the telephone conversations and that she did not ask about them. It is still unclear why it took at least an hour and a half for Mazón to appear at the crisis center after lunch.
The coming days will reveal how things will proceed in Valencia’s politics. Mazón said he would not call early elections, but asked his party and the coalition partner, the radical right-wing Vox, to nominate a successor. It seems likely that he will remain a member of parliament to maintain his parliamentary immunity.
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