Salomé Pradas, the former Valencia Emergency Minister, returns to Congress this Monday to declare that she is responsible for the management of the disaster of October 29, 2024, which left 233 dead, according to the figure updated this Monday. Pradas has not responded to the first questions from the parliamentary groups and has hidden behind the fact that the case is being investigated in the Catarroja court, a case in which she is accused, and that she already reported everything the first time she set foot in the commission. He has only taken advantage of some intervention to attack the deputies, qualify statements or support the PP's thesis about the tragedy: "I was, not only that night, the next day, the next day... I was at the foot of the canyon since that morning, before I was even the institutional director of the plan."
Despite remaining silent when faced with direct questions, Pradas has promised to provide more information to the investigative commission, such as a new audio that he provided on the day of the confrontation he had this August with José Manuel Cuenca, the former chief of staff of former president Carlos Mazón and with whom he maintained contact during the day of the tragedy. In that audio, the appearing party has indicated, she tells Cuenca the decisions she was making. “I, total transparency,” stated Pradas.
The former councilor testifies in Congress one year after her first appearance and one week after Mazón went to the parliamentary commission to answer the deputies' questions. During this year, new information that has come to light has exposed the story of the Mazón Government and the version that the information it had was insufficient and that it reached Cecopi - the body of the Generalitat Valenciana that managed the crisis - in the afternoon. Although the truth is that he entered the center after eight in the afternoon, when the ES-Alert message had already been sent to the population.
Pradas was in charge of Cecopi on the day of the floods and behind the sending of the ES-Alert. The message, after several hours of debate among the members of the center, reached citizens' cell phones after eight in the afternoon, when at least 155 people had already died and the situation of several dozen Valencians was insurmountable.
That alert was also sent before Mazón arrived at Cecopi. Last Monday, the former president refused in the Congressional commission to answer the deputies' questions and only revealed that he was not in charge of the emergency when he entered Cecopi. One more statement from the former leader of the Valencian Government, who for months released different versions of his management to the press.
During the first year after the floods, Mazón repeatedly denied, for example, the time at which he had arrived at Cecopi, the duration of his meal that day with a journalist in a restaurant booth, his knowledge of the existence of deaths as the day progressed, and the communications he had with Pradas.
The former councilor herself revealed months later in an interview on the Salvados program that at 1:00 p.m. that day she received orders from Mazón's chief of staff, José Manuel Cuenca, not to bother the president. In fact, in the list of calls from the former Emergency Minister that day, which appears in the case summary, there are two canceled by Cuenca (at 12:54) and another by Mazón (at 12:59). There is also another one that Cuenca makes and that coincides with the Pradas reveal at 1:19 p.m. This communication lasts a minute and is possibly the one in which, according to Pradas, the Chief of Staff warns her not to bother the then president.
Pradas sat in the chair of those appearing several hours after the president of the Valencia Provincial Council, Vicente Mompó, who admitted that “the management was a disaster.” "I do not applaud Mazón or Pradas or you or any of my colleagues for what happened on the day of the dana (...). I do not applaud the management of the dana of any public office after what we have suffered," the PP official responded to the questions from the deputies. Mompó has acknowledged the lack of response from the Valencian Government on the day of the tragedy, but has justified it in the thesis that the regional Executive continues to put forward: “There was a lot of information missing that day.” He also responded to questions about Mazón's role in the management of the dana:
-Do you think that the victims who say that Mazón should not be certified are right or wrong?
―The victims are the ones who are right from the beginning.
The president of the Provincial Council has attacked the deputies who have demanded answers about what he did that day. "What was my mistake? Being the only person who, having no obligation, risked his life trying to help? Why didn't you do the same?" Mompó read in a final speech prepared and given during the question time of his political group. The senior Valencian official has stated that few people - he did - canceled their agenda the day before the dana, in accordance with the weather warnings. "Whoever has a responsibility, let him assume it. And whoever has to respond to justice, let him respond. But analyzing everything means analyzing everything, not just what fits into the political narrative," the senior official stressed.
It is not the first time that Mompó and Pradas go to the commission to testify about their responsibilities on the day of the tragedy, what they did and what they did not do. Both Pradas and Mompó have already responded to the deputies' questions; The first appeared last December and the second, in November. The two evaded responsibilities.
Mompó has confirmed everything he said in his previous appearance: that at Cecopi the main concern was the failure of the Forata dam and that the objective of the ES-Alert that was sent was to warn of that possibility. He has also maintained that no one was in charge of the emergencies, as Mazón maintained in his appearance last Monday, but that all members of the coordination center were involved. "That was not a plenary session that I was directing. It was a fluid thing where we were making decisions," he stated.
