The judge investigating the management of the damage that caused 230 deaths in the province of Valencia has agreed, according to an order notified this Monday, that the president of the Popular Party can testify on January 9 as a witness electronically, as the political leader had requested. The instructor wants to recount her conversations with former president Carlos Mazón on the day of the cold drop after the leader assured that his Valencian counterpart informed him “in real time” of the evolution of the storm. In the car, the judge offers him the possibility of voluntarily handing over the entire conversation between them.
In mid-December, the judge accepted the request made by the Association of Mortal Victims Dana 29-0, which is prosecuting the private prosecution, to call Feijóo as a witness and justified her decision in that she could “give reason for the comments” that Carlos Mazón “may have made” on October 29 “as a result of the conversations” with the then Minister of Justice and Interior, Salomé Pradas, investigated in these preliminary proceedings, “about the information that I was receiving.”
According to what the instructor argued at the time, Pradas informed Mazón of the “seriousness of the situation” and the former president would have reported the The flow of data would have affected “the measures that were being adopted by Cecopi [el órgano de la Generalitat que gestionó la crisis]”The instructor refers to the sending of the Es Alert, the massive alert to inform the population of the magnitude of the damage, which was sent at 8:11 p.m., when, at least, 155 missing persons had died, and which has become the cornerstone of the investigations.
The resolution offered Feijóo the possibility of voluntarily presenting the list of calls, messages, emails and whatsapp which he received from Mazón on the day of the storm. In fact, the popular leader sent the messages he received from Mazón to the Catarroja Court last Christmas Eve on the day of the tragedy. Feijóo delivered only the messages he received from former president, accompanied by a document with context, but not theirs, claiming that the judge had not asked for them.
In this regard, Feijóo defended this Monday having given the Dana judge all the messages she requested and said that if she asks for the response messages to the former president Carlos Mazón will give it to you. “I have given exactly what he asked me for, the messages I received from Mr. Mazón that day,” Feijóo said in a press conference in which he recalled that the Catarroja judge’s request was voluntary.
In her resolution this Monday, the judge refers to article 412 of the Criminal Procedure Law, which Feijóo mentions in her request and which, in section 5, contemplates the possibility of deputies and senators testifying from their official office.
In this sense, the judge points out that “she cannot but agree to the request made, that the witness statement be made from her official office in Congress, through telematic means, in accordance with the aforementioned precept invoked by the witness, in which he relies, via webex.”
Likewise, he points out that “all of this without prejudice to the possibility of the witness to appear before this Court to testify in person on the indicated date.”
a dozen messages
The communications, according to the notarial record delivered by the president of the Popular Party to the judge, began at 8:08 p.m. on October 29 with a brief “Thank you Presi” from Mazón in response to a message of support from Feijóo to the then president, sent at 7:59 p.m. This means that Mazón responded to the leader of the PP when the majority of victims had been claimed and, therefore, refutes Feijóo himself, who had stated that he had been punctually informed by Mazón.
After the “Thank you Presi” message, Mazón added: “I’ll tell you later. Every minute is getting screwed.” By then, theformer president He had not arrived at Cecopi, where they were attending to the emergency. He did not do so until 8:28 p.m., according to his own account. “Long night ahead,” he wrote just a few minutes later.
According to the documents, the Valencian president asked Feijóo for the telephone number of the former president of Telefónica, José María Álvarez-Pallete, to which the PP leader responded with the contact but apologizing for not being able to answer him because he was at an institutional event. At 9:45 p.m., Mazón continues the conversation: “We are overwhelmed, we don’t know what is really happening but we receive dozens of missing people and I cannot confirm them.” The last communication
