The Government Delegate in the Valencian Community, the socialist Pilar Bernabé, said Monday that he offered the Military Emergency Unit (UME) to the Generalitat Valenciana eight hours before the Government of Carlos Mazón sent the alert to mobile phones to inform the population of the magnitude of the tragedy. In his statement as a witness in the Court of Catarroja (Valencia) that instructs the inquiries of the flood, Bernabé explained that he contacted the then Minister of Justice and Interior of the Government of Carlos Mazón, Salome Pradas, at 12.23 hours of the day of the Dana, on October 29, to offer him the military device, according to sources present in his statement. The Valencian Executive sent the massive SMS to the phones at 20.11 hours, when there were already dozens of deaths, missing and people trapped in low floors and garages.
Bernabé is declaring as a witness to the judge who criminally instructs the inquiries of the cold drop, Nuria Ruiz Tobarra, from 9.45 hours.
Unlike last Friday, when they came to declare as investigated the two former positions of Carlos Mazón executive – the former counselor of and whoever was his second, the former emergency director Emilio Argüeso – Bernabé has not been incredible to the entrance of the glazed swarm of offices of the city of justice of Valencia. Dozens of relatives of victims then received the two former leaders to the shout of “Mazón, resignation!” or “Mazón, Putero!”
Bernabé, that as a witness should tell the truth and respond to all parties, has indicated before entering the court that will not avoid any of the questions. The dozens of particular accusations may formulate issues (most are relatives of fatalities), the popular ones – which exercise parties such as Podemos, Vox, Citizens or the PSOE -, the prosecutor and lawyers of the former Mazón charges charged in the investigations,
Since the judicial instruction started, five months ago, Bernabé has become the target of the extreme right organizations, as if to hear, who have resorted to his figure to try to sustain the thesis of the responsibility of the Executive of Pedro Sánchez in the monumental flood. An argument that the instructor already ruled out, insisting on the “autonomous competition” of the tragedy, and the Public Ministry, which dismissed the appeal of this Ultra Organization.
Not urging the Ministry of Interior to the statement of the state of emergency after the cold drop. “Such an argument is absurd. It is as if, before a traffic accident with injuries and deaths, several drivers denote the help of the victims, and a complaint is formalized against one of the drivers,” the Public Ministry then justified in a brief.
The statement as a Bernabé witness develops two days later Pradas and Argüeso wielded the quoted exculpatory thesis to justify their work in the tragedy, they discharged their responsibility in the technicians and explicitly protected those who catapulted them at the first line of the Valencian politics, Carlos Mazón. The investigations instruct the alleged crimes of homicide and reckless injuries, which are punished between four and three years in jail, respectively.
The president of the Diputación de Valencia, Vicent Mompó, of the PP, will also declare today as a witness to Judge Tobarra.
