On October 29, 2024, the day that Valencians needed him most, his president of the decision-making and emergency monitoring places. On the 30th, once the disaster was confirmed (229 dead), Carlos Mazón decided to flee forward, spreading responsibility in all directions except his own. But this Wednesday, a year later, he had to face the relatives of the victims. Separated by just a few meters of distance, the popular leader heard how they shouted at him “coward”, “murderer”, “disgraceful” and how they reminded him of “the lunch with the journalist…” in which he spent a good part of that afternoon. And 365 days later, Mazón collapsed.
It was no longer the media, nor the central government and its “smoke screens” to cover corruption; nor, as the popular ones slipped in the first and demanding his resignation, nationalist groups with partisan zeal. They were the mothers, fathers, children and brothers who perhaps could have been saved if the warning message had arrived sooner. And they looked their president in the face, waving photographs of their loved ones as if they were flags; showing them on their mobile screens the images of smiling men, women and children, full of life.
With tears in his eyes, especially at first, Mazón listened to what anger sounds like. It could be heard very loudly inside the Prince Philip Science Museum, where the state funeral was held, and also outside, where a hundred people shouted: “They are not dead, they are murdered!” The host of the event, Lara Siscar, spent several minutes reciting, one by one, the names of the 229 victims of dana in the Valencian Community, the seven who lost their lives in Andalusia. Some matching surnames, read aloud, reminded that tragedy struck the same family more than once that afternoon: Francisco Javier Sanchis Palop and María Pilar Sanchis Palop (siblings); Elvira Martínez Alfaro and Elisabet Gil Martínez (mother and daughter)… Mazón, who until now had avoided meeting with the main victims’ associations, also had to listen to what those who died that afternoon were like, which he still has not wanted to clarify: Slim Regaieg liked merengue – they still kept some in the refrigerator -; Eva María Canut, the mother of Andrea Ferrari, 20 years old, was one of those people full of energy who believe that “anything is possible.” Mazón seemed especially moved when Naiara Chuliá described Slim, 47, as the love of her life, and when she explained how she often dreams that she manages to save him and when she wakes up is when “the nightmare” actually begins.
Mazón, the host, listened in the third row. He barely spoke to anyone beyond his bodyguard since arriving in the city of science and arts in Valencia and was excluded from a brief meeting with a dozen representatives of the victims before the funeral. It was , the one who was introducing by name the relatives of the deceased to the Kings, Pedro Sánchez and the presidents of the Congress and the Senate. Some victims had warned these days that they were offended that the president who disappeared for several hours that crucial afternoon was present at the funeral for those who perhaps could have been saved. Added to the pain of the anniversary, for many families, was the tension caused by that coincidence: having to share the solemn ceremony of mourning with the one who was not there when he should have been.
Neither the day nor the year had started like this, with a moved president. In the morning, in an institutional statement, he had dared to speak in the third person of the “helplessness” that Valencians suffered in the face of “unimaginable circumstances.” He gave his first interview after the October 2024 flood just a few weeks ago and it was with the journalist who called the magistrate investigating the case for the management of the flood. There he assured that he had never thought about resigning – the Valencians have asked him to do so in 12 massive demonstrations – and that if he had not spoken until then it was because he did not want to be “the focus.” But then I had not yet had to look mothers, fathers, children and brothers in the face.
