Regional Spanish leader under fire year after deadly floods

Regional Spanish leader under fire year after deadly floods
By Alfons LUNA
Madrid (AFP) Oct 29, 2025

One year after historic floods killed 229 people in Valencia, the Spanish region's leader Carlos Mazon has faced mounting criticism over his handling of the disaster and defied calls to resign.

The eastern region bordering the Mediterranean had woken up under the highest red alert for torrential rain on October 29 last year.

But for five hours, the conservative Mazon, 51, was absent from the front line of an emergency response widely condemned as inadequate.

Above all, the late sending of a mass telephone alert to residents at 8:11 pm sparked fierce scrutiny of his agenda and a debate about whether that delayed potentially life-saving action.

"If Mazon had really been where he should have been, the alarm would have arrived on time," leftist MP Agueda Mico, of the regionalist Compromis party, said on Tuesday.

Regions are primarily responsible for managing emergencies in Spain's decentralised political system, but Mazon has denied accusations of dereliction of duty during the country's deadliest natural disaster in decades.

"I did not switch off my mobile, I was not unreachable, I did not lack coverage, I did not lose interest, nor was I lost," he told local newspaper Las Provincias in a rare interview since the tragedy.

According to the Levante newspaper, a colleague told Mazon there were already "many deaths" when he arrived in the evening at the seat of the regional government after a lengthy lunch.

Mazon resumed work at 7:45 pm and joined a critical emergency services meeting at around 8:30 pm, shortly after the telephone alert had been sent.

But the warning was too little, too late: muddy floodwater was already gushing through towns south of Valencia city and claiming lives.

- Shifting narrative -

Mazon said he spent four of his five hours of absence having lunch with a journalist to offer her a job.

This came after he had initially claimed to have eaten with a representative of Valencian businesses, but the person in question quickly came out to deny that account.

The remaining hour of Mazon's absence -- a critical period during which regional authorities hesitated about sending the alarm -- remains shrouded in mystery.

The journalist, Maribel Vilaplana, broke her silence last month, saying they left the restaurant "between 6:30 and 6:45".

But sources close to Vilaplana, contradicting Mazon's narrative, revealed that he then accompanied her to search for her car instead of heading straight to his office.

An unexplained gap persists in his account of events from 6:57 to 7:34, when Mazon made and received no calls, according to a list he submitted to a parliamentary committee.

At 7:36 pm, the list shows he turned down a call from his then-top emergencies official, Salome Pradas, now under investigation for her role in the handling of the floods.

- Conservatives 'undermined' -

Although not under formal judicial investigation himself, Mazon has spent a year resisting intense pressure to resign.

Thousands of protesters have descended on Valencia's streets every month demanding he quit, while 75 percent of the region's residents want him to go, according to a poll published on Monday by Las Provincias and conservative daily ABC.

Experts view Mazon as a burden for the national leader of his opposition conservative Popular Party (PP), Alberto Nunez Feijoo, who prefers to dodge the topic.

Mazon "undermines Feijoo as a leader" and gives the Socialists "arguments to respond to corruption accusations" against Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, said Anton Losada, a political science professor at the University of Santiago de Compostela.

For Paloma Roman Marugan, associate professor of political science at Madrid's Complutense University, the PP has entered "a rabbit hole" that could have been avoided "with a swift resignation that never happened".

"But bringing him (Mazon) down is a tricky puzzle" for the PP as the party has no obvious replacement and wants to avoid early elections, she told AFP.

Spain to hold memorial on first anniversary of deadly floods
Valencia, Spain (AFP) Oct 29, 2025 - Grieving relatives will join political leaders Wednesday for a state memorial service in Spain for the more than 230 victims of last year's floods on the anniversary of the disaster.

King Felipe VI will lead mourners at the ceremony, which is set to get underway at 6:00 pm (1700 GMT) in Valencia, Spain's third-largest city on the Mediterranean coast.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and regional leader Carlos Mazon -- who is under fire over his response to Spain's deadliest floods in a generation -- are also expected to attend.

Joining them will be mayors from the 78 municipalities hit by the floods, mostly in the southern outskirts of Valencia, and around 800 relatives of the victims.

The event will take place at a museum in the City of Arts and Sciences, a cultural and architectural complex surrounded by shallow pools in Valencia.

The regional government has declared a day of mourning, while the town of Paiporta, at the epicentre of the disaster, will observe three days of remembrance.

"Any slightly cloudy day, you can sense that we're not okay, because we are a traumatised society," Marilo Gradoli, the head of an association representing victims of the floods, told AFP.

In last year's natural disaster, torrential rain unleashed flooding that killed 229 people in towns near Valencia.

Seven more people died in the neighbouring Castilla-La Mancha region, and one person died in Andalusia in the south.

The deluge swept away 130,000 vehicles and damaged thousands of homes, generating 800,000 tonnes of debris.

- 'On our own' -

Mazon's regional administration has been heavily criticised for not sending out alerts to mobile phones until 8:11 pm -- when flooding had already started in some places.

That was more than 12 hours after the national weather agency had issued its highest alert level for torrential rains.

Despite signs of severe flooding, Mazon went ahead with an hours-long lunch with a journalist on the day of the catastrophe.

He has defended his handling of the crisis, saying its magnitude was unforeseeable and that central authorities did not provide sufficient warning about the severity of the rain.

Anger as well as sadness remain vivid among residents of the affected areas.

"We were really on our own," said Doly Murcia, 50, from Paiporta, where 56 people died and furious survivors hurled mud at the visiting monarchs and Sanchez in the immediate aftermath.

More than 50,000 people took to the streets of Valencia city on Saturday to demand that Mazon resign over his response to the floods, the latest in a string of such demonstrations.

Mazon has frequently been heckled when appearing at public events, and some victims' families have called on him to stay away from the state memorial.

But his conservative Popular Party, which sits in opposition to the Socialist Sanchez at the national level, has insisted he should be present as the representative of the Valencian people.

A judicial investigation into the emergency response is underway.

Under Spain's decentralised system, managing disasters falls under the authority of regional governments.