At 5:59 p.m. this Thursday, Carlos Mazón entered the Les Corts chamber after having left his chair empty for hours. At 6:16 p.m. he left the plenary session, without renouncing his membership as a deputy, and after granting his Yeah out loud he will be a “magnificent” president, he ventured about the until now parliamentary spokesperson for the PP. In the 17 minutes that Mazón was inside the room, Pérez Llorca escaped direct contact with the president acting. He didn’t greet him when he entered, he turned his back to him for a long time and then, once they were seated, he avoided their gazes. Until there was no choice: Mazón shook his hand in a protocol manner as a sign of congratulations after winning the vote. At the end of it all he patted him on the shoulder. He handed it back to her out of the corner of his eye. Of course, they had already hugged each other behind closed doors amid the applause of their own, out of the spotlight and during the recess before the vote. The day of the investiture ended for the popular ones with a group photo in front of the tribune. It was Mazón’s 18th minute. The acting head of the Consell was no longer there.
Almost a year and a month before the image, on November 7 of last year, Mazón was wandering with a distraught face around the Paiporta command post a week after the damage and when the press was trying by all means to find out where he was at the worst of the catastrophe. That November 7, the leader of the Valencian PP had to sit face to face with Maribel Albalat, the then mayor of the municipality of ground zero of the cold drop that left 229 dead in the Valencian Community. Together they went to the improvised barracks where the security forces organized the teams when the streets were still flooded.
On the day of the dana, the mayor of Paiporta called the Government delegate by phone at 7:00 p.m. to claim that in her town “people were dying.” Today it is known that at that time Mazón was with the journalist Maribel Vilaplana for five hours in a private room in El Ventorro with a bill of 165 euros. The mayor of Paiporta left office eight months later due to medical prescription due to the consequences of the drama. Mazón held on to his position until the anniversary of the disaster. He resigned a year later, forced by direct reproaches from the victims’ relatives and by political asphyxiation after stringing together lie after lie around that lunch.
Already this Thursday, Mazón has set foot in Les Corts in his last hours as Valencian president. But he did it only for a few minutes to vote in favor of his number twoPérez Llorca, after an investiture debate in which he ignored the figure of predecessor. “That man you’re talking about,” the Compromís spokesperson, Joan Baldoví, ironically said on the platform.
“Maximum prominence for the candidate”
At 10:30 this Thursday, Pérez Llorca greeted various senior officials of the Valencian PP in the Les Corts cafeteria, including the three presidents of the provincial councils and the members of the current Consell. No sign of Mazón. The team of the still acting president announced shortly after that he would only go to vote. And he gave his reasons through social networks. “Today it is essential that this process develops with maximum prominence for the candidate, thus respecting the natural course of the debate; that is why I have decided to go to the plenary session once the groups’ interventions are finished,” the leader of the Valencian PP justified in a message on the social network X.
At 5:49 p.m., Mazón appeared on stage in the rooms of the Benicarló Palace, headquarters of Les Corts Valencianas and which during the Spanish Civil War was the headquarters of the presidency of the Second Spanish Republic installed in Valencia. At that time this Thursday, the president of the current Valencian Autonomous Chamber, María de los Llanos Massó (Vox), had established a recess before the vote, which would take place at 6:00 p.m. It was then when the president In office he played cat and mouse, fleeing from journalists. He took refuge in a hallway not accessible to the media along with the rest of the PP deputies, who received him with hugs and applause.
Pérez Llorca left the place first and, several meters further back, after several charges from the PP, Mazón finally entered the chamber at 5:59 p.m., where some of the victims of the dana watched him with serious faces from the public gallery. He hugged again with more colleagues and the voting began. In the seat, while the president of the Chamber named the deputies one by one, calling them to vote, Mazón laughed nervously, waved to fellow party members and guests in the gallery and chatted with the vice president, Susana Camarero, sitting as always next to him. Behind, Pérez Llorca, much more serious than his predecessor. “Yes,” he finally agreed at 6:10 p.m. Then more hugs from the PP deputies as he climbed the stairs and left through the door at 6:16 p.m. His classmates stayed for the group photo.
