The president of Valencia region resigned one year after Dana storm tragedy

Brussels – After a year of stubborn reluctance, the president of the Spanish region of Valencia, Carlos Mazón, has succumbed to political and public pressure and has resigned over the failed management of the floods that killed 229 people in several locations around the capital on 29 October 2024. The clash between the Valencian Generalitat, led by the conservatives of the People’s Party, and the socialist government in Madrid, over responsibility for the tragedy, also involved the then Minister for Spanish Transition, Teresa Ribera, in the early stages, threatening to compromise her appointment as executive vice-president of the European Commission. 

This morning, in a press conference in which he did not accept questions, Mazón announced that he was quitting the regional presidency: “I can no longer go on,” he told reporters, admitting some mistakes but accusing Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez once again of having obstructed the relief effort out of political calculation and of having done a poor job in reconstruction. Mazón had immediately ended up in the dock because, despite the alert issued by Madrid on the morning of 29 October, he only activated the emergency measures in the evening, after having lingered for hours over lunch with a journalist and arriving late for the meeting of the flood management coordination body.

The resigning president has stated that there will be no new elections and that his successor will be chosen from the ranks of the coalition that supported him at the beginning of his term in 2023, formed by the People’s Party and the far-right Vox. 

Last Wednesday, during the commemoration ceremony for the victims of the disaster in Valencia, Mazón was severely challenged. So, after rejecting calls to step back for a year, he relented. An investigation is underway to determine criminal responsibility for the failure to manage the flooding. Still, it is clear that, from a political point of view, resignation seemed inevitable to most. But the strong polarisation in Spanish national politics has made the tragedy a political case and battleground between the leader of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and the socialist government of Pedro Sánchez. 

So much so that the Iberian tug-of-war over responsibility reached the European institutions in Brussels, keeping the College of Commissioners’ approval process in a stalemate for days. In fact, the Popular Party accused Teresa Ribera, the then Minister for Transition and now Executive Vice-President of the European Commission, of being the real culprit of the disaster. With that move, the right-wing parties also secured the nomination of the Melonian Raffaele Fitto, who was firmly opposed by the Socialists.