In these times of hoaxes and misinformation, a rumor and the fear of losing power may have changed the course of the history of the PP of the Valencian Community. On Thursday, October 30, when the boos of the victims were still echoing at the State funeral against the now acting president of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, the idea began to spread strongly through the Palau de la Generalitat and the party that Alberto Núñez Feijóo had made the decision to force the resignation of the head of the Consell and that he was going to impose the mayor of València, María José Catalá, as his replacement. Whether there were elections or an interim presidency, the decision was imminent.
The rumor fell like a bomb on Carlos Mazón, who was already thinking of throwing in the towel after the tribute to the 237 victims of the crime at the Science Museum and the planned statement by Maribel Vilaplana, but also on his closest collaborators. The arrival of María José Catalá, or the elections if Vox did not accept its candidate – for whom the far-right approved the budget in Valencia just this past week – meant the loss of total control of the succession process, a change in the party's power structures and the end of the careers of some of the president's closest collaborators.
The danger of an imposition by Catalá made Mazón and his people move, and on Friday, October 31, Juan Francisco Pérez Llorca, by order of Mazón, gathered in Benidorm the three presidents of the provincial councils of València, Castelló and Alicante: Vicente Mompó, Marta Barrachina and Toni Pérez. All the living forces – now less – of the Popular Party in the Valencian Community: the general secretary and the three provincial presidents. Carlos Mazón did not attend this conspiracy, which, as usually happens in these operations, was convened without lights or stenographers and without photos, nor was the general coordinator of the PP, Elías Bendodo, as one of the attendees at the meeting was responsible for disseminating days later, when he realized the “screw up” of the meeting.
Of the already forgotten meeting, all the participants frame it as “absolute normality”, the leadership of the national PP was not informed nor were the heavyweights of the Valencian PP such as María José Catalá herself, the mayor of Alicante, Luis Barcala, or Esteban González Pons himself, a member of the national leadership. On Saturday, November 1, and after voluntarily coming to light, from the Génova Street address they explained that “they did not acknowledge it.” It was already late: all the regional and national media published that the option to succeed Carlos Mazón would be Juanfran Pérez Llorca as interim president until the elections are called, and Vicente Mompó as a candidate for 2027. Ten days later, none of the four attendees at the meeting have said “this mouth is mine.”
“We have to throw them all out”
The conspiracy had an effect, or at least it dispelled the ghosts in Carlos Mazón's head, and Génova neither launched nor will soon launch María José Catalá to succeed him. But it broke all the bridges between the national and regional leadership, and caused everything to blow up. On Saturday and Sunday, November 1 and 2, the situation was of unprecedented tension. Sources familiar with the tough negotiations between Mazón's team and Génova, which ended in several calls from Alberto Núñez Feijóo to Carlos Mazón, assure that, feeling betrayed, the national leadership cried out: “We must fire them all!” That is, to Carlos Mazón, but also to everything that smells or has smelled of Mazonism.
And that decision to “clean up” Mazonism, together with Mazón's interest in protecting his succession, was what tightened the rope so much that the national and regional PP did not reach any agreement for the already historic appearance on November 3. Only the resignation of the president of the Generalitat was agreed, to demonstrate Feijóo's authority to a Mazón exhausted after a year of lies and media pressure. But the path forward was not closed, which currently has both the popular Valencians and Feijóo himself on the ropes, who must now give explanations for the pact – or the elections – that Vox forces them to close in the Valencian Community.
The rupture between Mazón and Feijóo was so great that something unprecedented has happened in the Valencian Community: the Valencian PP is the first party in the history of Valencian democracy that wants to invest a president without having a clear candidate, and where it will be a minority party that authorizes it. It is not just about negotiating a program, which would be normal, but also about deciding who will execute it.
On November 3, in his press conference leaving office, Mazón still had time to challenge Génova again — he had already closed the pact with Vox in 2023 without notifying Madrid, with the corresponding electoral cost for Feijóo. The president assured, when he had not yet said when he would present his resignation, that on November 4 he could take sick leave. A situation that could have left the Valencian Community, but above all the PP, without a clear calendar until further notice. The national leadership and Feijóo himself had to come out publicly hours later to confirm that Mazón had resigned. After hours and pressure calls, this time, the head of the Consell “couldn't take it anymore” and presented his resignation letter around three in the afternoon, almost six hours after announcing it.
On November 5, after the weekend of the long knives and with the succession clock ticking, Alberto Núñez Feijóo called Santiago Abascal to begin negotiations with the intention of naming a successor for Mazón and closing this unprecedented institutional crisis, in which the president who resigned on Monday, November 3, could remain in office until May 2026.
But since the PP is in a hurry, the first contact meeting between the two parties did not take place until Friday, November 7, 72 hours after Feijóo's call to Abascal. Once again, there was no coordination between Génova and the Valencian PP, and the discomfort of the situation for both sides was once again evident. Vox has appointed negotiators, but there are still no official names on the part of the popular ones. They say in Genoa that the mission is for the Valencian PP, but that it will be supervised from Madrid. What is certain is that, as of November 10, seven days after Mazón resigned, the PP does not know who will be its candidate to succeed him, as Ignacio Garriga, one of the negotiators appointed by Vox, recognized this Sunday. And the clock ticks undisturbed until November 19, the deadline to present a name to the Corts Valencianes.
While the negotiations began, confusion, discouragement and, in many cases, fear of losing their jobs has set in in the Valencian PP. The majority of officials consulted consider Carlos Mazón's entire team of collaborators politically “dead”, especially his chief of staff, José Manuel Cuenca; his external advisor, Josep Lanuza; and his three most trusted regional secretaries: Cayetano García Ramírez, Santiago Lumbreras and Javier Sendra, designers of the failed post-Ventorro defense strategy. It remains to be seen if the expansion wave caused by the Benidorm conspiracy ends up taking Juanfran Pérez Llorca and Vicent Mompó himself, who downplays the importance of the meeting that designated him as the future of the Valencian PP. It is striking that, a week later, and if the option of the mayor of Finestrat to succeed Mazón is so clear, his candidacy has not yet been presented to the Corts and the wound of resignation remains open, with Vox throwing salt.
On the part of Génova, this week of passion has served to have to give explanations about the negotiations with Vox and to reinforce, even more so, that Feijóo's wife in Valencia is María José Catalá. This Thursday, in Madrid, and on the occasion of the newspaper awards 20 MinutesFeijóo and Catalá spoke for half an hour, in view of all attendees and with serious faces. Sources in person explain that, after taking a joint photo – Catalá received an award at the free newspaper's gala – Feijóo took the mayor of València by the arm and suggested they have a conversation, which took place face to face in the adjoining room where the cocktail party was held after the awards ceremony.
This Monday the 10th begins another heart-stopping week for the Valencian PP. Without a clear direction and at the expense of Vox, the acting president appears before the Valencian Courts this Tuesday, November 11. It was at his own request, so he will have some surprise in store. Surely the interrogation will once again serve to talk about the management of DANA, El Ventorro and the end of Mazón's political career. Because we Valencians are still there, trapped on October 29, 2024.