Mazón's letter turns against him: Congress prepares his second summons to the commission for the DANA management

The Congress of Deputies is preparing a second appearance by Carlos Mazón before the commission investigating the management of the DANA of October 29, 2024. Most of its members want the former president of the Generalitat to explain his latest judicial brief, in which he tried to disassociate the delay in warning the population from the deaths caused by the floods.

The commission's Bureau will meet this Wednesday to formalize the next summons and set the dates. Work is expected to resume during the week of September 21 and Mazón will be the first to appear, as announced by Compromís deputy Àgueda Micó.

It will be the second time that the former popular leader responds before the deputies. In his previous appearance, held on November 17, 2025, he defended that "nothing would have changed" if he had arrived earlier at the Integrated Operational Coordination Center (Cecopi), which he joined after 8:30 p.m.

Micó considers it "essential" that Mazón return to Congress because he was "totally absent" during the decisive hours and was the highest political authority of the Valencian Government. The deputy maintains that he had the obligation to ensure that the population received information about the magnitude of the danger.

Mazón's thesis clashes with the judge

The origin of the new summons is in the 71-page brief presented by Mazón's defense before Nuria Ruiz Tobarra, the magistrate of Catarroja who is investigating the management of the catastrophe. The document analyzes dozens of deaths and maintains that there is no individualized causal link between the late sending of the ES-Alert mass warning system and these deaths.

The defense argues that many victims would have died even if the message had been sent before 8:11 p.m. It also rejects that Mazón gave instructions about the alert or had a direct position of responsibility in the operational management of the emergency, which it places on the then councilor Salomé Pradas and the members of the Cecopi.

The judge has responded harshly to this approach. Ruiz Tobarra considers that Mazón's "exculpatory thesis" ends up directly pointing to Pradas and recalls that ignorance of the danger and the absence of adequate warnings were common factors in the cases cited by the defense itself.

"No one can deny that the lack of warnings about the risk the population assumed by going down to the garages proved fatal," the magistrate warned. Her resolution states that the protection measures "never arrived in time" and that the message sent at 8:11 p.m. had a "manifestly erroneous and incomplete" content.

Ruiz Tobarra also recalled that Mazón continues to be privileged due to his seat in Les Corts Valencianes and that the Catarroja court lacks jurisdiction to investigate him directly. The former president is not formally charged and, despite having appeared in the procedure, he has not yet testified or requested to do so.

Pending accounts before the second anniversary

The majority of the commission, with the opposition of PP and the far-right Vox, wants to hear Mazón again before closing its conclusions in November. The appearance will come close to the second anniversary of a catastrophe that left 232 people dead and keeps numerous questions open about the hours in which the former president remained outside the Cecopi.

Micó has also asked to summon again the president of the Provincial Council of Valencia, Vicente Mompó, whom he accuses of having lied during his first appearance. The Compromís-Sumar deputy Alberto Ibáñez wants to call the former regional secretary of Emergencies Emilio Argüeso, who previously refused to attend alleging "force majeure."

The commission also keeps the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, on its list of speakers. The PSOE agreed to include him with the expectation that he would intervene at the end of the work, although Micó demands that the main members of the Executive testify before the second anniversary.

The Bureau must specify the calendar this Wednesday. Mazón will return to Congress with his judicial brief on the table, Ruiz Tobarra's response incorporated into the case, and a question that his first appearance left open: what did the highest authority of the Generalitat do while the emergency advanced and the alert continued without reaching the population's phones.