THE outgoing Valencian president, Carlos Mazon, told a Congress committee investigation into the October 29 floods that authorities did not know that people were drowning.
Mazon was questioned in Madrid on Monday over his handling of the disaster that claimed 229 lives.
He announced his resignation on November 3.
PROTEST OUTSIDE CONGRESS(Cordon Press image)
In a tense session, the leader of the far-left Podemos party, Ione Belarra, accused Mazon of being personally responsible for the deaths.
Gabriel Rufian of the Catalan ERC party said that Mazon should be jailed.
Families of victims protested outside the Congress building as they followed Mazon’s testimony.
Some of the deputies accused him of inaction, while he countered that authorities were not conscious of the catastrophe’s scale.
“No one was aware of the magnitude, no one knew that people were drowning,” Mazon said.
He did not provide any new details on that day’s timeline, including a lunch with journalist Maribel Vilaplana at a restaurant that lasted for several hours.
Neither did he elaborate on a 45-minute period when his bodyguards were absent and which records show the emergency services minister, Salome Pradas, was trying to reach him.
Mazon said he could not hear his mobile phone because it was in his backpack.
He told Congress that he could not provide an exact timeline of his whereabouts, stating: “I cannot be precise about the exact timings.”
He also said ‘nothing would’ve changed’ if he had left the lunch and arrived earlier at an emergency committee meeting.
PNV Basque delegate Idoia Sagastizabal echoed the criticism of others who have said his account of events has repeatedly changed: “There are many holes in your versions.”
Mazon defended missed calls from his emergency chief, Salome Pradas and insisted that issuing the official flood warning to residents – a message that reached phones only hours into the disaster, when many people had already drowned – was not his responsibility.
“I hope you pay for everything you’ve done with prison time,” said the ERC’s Gabriel Ruffin while holding up pictures of victims and demanding that Mazon publicly apologise.
He also accused him of behaving like a ‘psychopath’ at last month’s state memorial service.
Mazon has previously said there has been a lack of support from the central government, blaming political strategy.
When he resigned earlier in the month, he said he admitted having made mistakes and that he would ‘have to live with them for the rest of my life’.
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