“When I returned home, I began to take in the true dimension of what had happened. As soon as I understood the magnitude of what had happened, I contacted the president when possible. In that conversation I conveyed my anguish to him and also asked him, very clearly, that my name please not appear.” The letter that the journalist Maribel Vilaplana made public on September 5 to explain her version of the meal she shared in El Ventorro with the president of the Valencian Government, Carlos Mazón, on the day of the dana, is expressed in these terms at one point in the story. The journalist explained that it was she who asked the president for discretion regarding their meeting because she did not want to be linked to such a traumatic episode.
The popular leader, elusive since the tragedy that took the lives of 229 people, this Wednesday sent a list of calls during the afternoon of October 29 to the investigation commission of the Dana in the Cortes, in which none appear with Vilaplana. As elDiario.es has reported, the document is not an official invoice from the telephone company that would allow the communications and their duration to be appreciated in detail, but rather it is a mere list sent by the regional secretary of Institutional Relations and Transparency, Santiago Lumbreras. This document hides the calls prior to 5:37 p.m., when he spoke for the first time with the former minister, Salomé Pradas, and ended at 11:29 p.m., when he spoke with the president of the Basque Government.
In the aforementioned document there is no reference to the journalist, who, according to her testimony, contacted Mazón to ask for discretion. This lack of temporal references in the letter, and of an official document that supports Mazón's word, has provoked numerous speculations and criticisms from the opposition, who accuse the popular leader of hiding communications.
However, as an authorized source close to the journalist has confirmed to this newsroom, the call did not occur on the night of the 29th “because it was impossible” nor in the early hours of the 30th. In this way, the contact occurred on successive days. In that conversation, the journalist points out in her statement, “I conveyed my anguish to him and also asked him, very clearly, that my name please not appear. I explained to him that it seemed deeply unfair to me to be linked to such a painful chapter when I had had absolutely nothing to do with it.”
In the control session at the Consell this Thursday, both the PSPV and Compromís questioned the head of the Consell about the list of calls, which they have questioned. The socialist ombudsman, José Muñoz, has asked why the communication does not appear, assuming that it was made in the evening of the dana, and has assured that the document is “cooked” by the presidency. The Compromís deputy Juan Bordera has also asked the president why there was no call from before 5:37 p.m., when Mazón was still in the restaurant. The president has avoided both issues, maintaining his usual silence about the key hours in the management of the emergency.
An hour without calls with those present at Cecopi
As elDiario.es has explained, the call list provided by Mazón shows that he spent an hour without speaking to anyone present at the meeting of the Integrated Operational Coordination Center (Cecopi), that he only directly called one mayor, the mayor of Cullera, and that he contacted the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo at 9:27 p.m.
Thus, after 6:30 p.m. Mazón calls Pradas and they talk for 33 seconds. After this last communication with the former counselor and sole command of the emergency, the calls are spaced out. The president now only contacts his closest team, who were not in person at Cecopi. The Presidency does not report any others until 6:48 p.m., when the president speaks with his general director of Communication. At 6:57 p.m. he speaks twice with the PP spokesperson in the Valencian Courts and his number two in the party, Juanfran Pérez Llorca. Afterwards, according to this version of the Presidency, there is no call until 7:34 p.m., when he speaks with the regional secretary of Infrastructure, Javier Sendra, who is in the Metrovalencia command center. There are 36 minutes without, according to his record, speaking to anyone.
Sendra's call to Mazón represents a kind of activation for the Valencian president, who makes four calls in four minutes. Call the regional secretary of the Presidency, José Manuel Cuenca, at 7:41 p.m.; at 7:42 p.m. to the general director of the cabinet secretary, Pilar Montes; at 7:43 p.m. to the Minister of the Interior, Salomé Pradas, and at 7:44 p.m. to the general director of Organization, María Jesús García Frígols.
In this way, President Mazón does not contact anyone who is in person at Cecopi between 6:30 p.m. and 7:43 p.m., when he speaks again with Minister Pradas. The head of the Emergency Department has called him twice and he has not responded. In the minutes that the former councilor presents to the court there are two “canceled” calls on her device, one at 7:10 p.m. and another at 7:36 p.m. Meanwhile, Pradas has spoken with his right-hand man, Cayetano García, the regional secretary of the Presidency. After the battery of calls to his team at the Palau, the president will call Pradas again at 8:10 p.m., a call that he hid in his conference at the Ritz. A call that Pradas did make does not appear in the Presidency record, at 8:19 p.m., nine minutes before Mazón appears at the door of the L'Eliana Emergency Center, according to the documentation sent to the court through the security cameras.
Furthermore, Mazón did not contact the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, until 9:27 p.m., when the catastrophe had already occurred, a call that was repeated four minutes later, at 9:31 p.m. Feijóo, in his first intervention when he visited Valencia two days after the flood, assured that he had been in contact “in real time” with Mazón since the night of October 28. Later, the PP rectified and stated that they spoke on the evening of October 29.