80,000 people demand Mazón's resignation over DANA floods

Three protests later, the 80,000 figure is still under suspicion

Valencia took to the streets again. The third mobilization against the DANA response drew nearly 80,000 people, according to organizers, under a banner demanding the resignation of Carlos Mazón and, in passing, became a tug-of-war over who bears the blame for a catastrophe with fatalities. The number is the first battleground: some accept it, others insist that many people couldn't fit between Plaza de San Agustí and Plaza de Toros. Forty days after October 29, the narrative remains split in two.

Was the protest against Pedro Sánchez?

For one side of the analysis, the march was against Mazón and only Mazón. The PSOE gathered 80,000 people, the most critical joke, stressing that the call was signed by entities well known for their prior political activity: Acció Cultural del País Valencià, Acció Ecologista-Agró, and ACICOM, among others, groups that were already demanding the Valencian president's resignation before this DANA existed. Hence the insistence that the underlying banner was regional, not national.

The opposite reading points to the same but in reverse: if the real target were Mazón, it makes no sense that the central government emerges unscathed from an equally questioned response. Against that, it is recalled that among the tractor convoy leading the march were farmers who demanded the resignation "of Carlos Mazón and Pedro Sánchez", because, in their view, neither measured up. The protest, they insist, was not as monolithic as some paint it.

Who was supposed to give the order to the UME?

Here the disagreement is technical and plays out in the field of competences. One current holds that the Army was ready to move in on the night of the DANA and only the order was missing; the Chief of Defense Staff and the Defense Minister had everything ready for a deployment on Wednesday morning the 30th, according to published accounts, and the operation did not go ahead. The reply is that the authority to request intervention lies with the Generalitat, not Moncloa, and that if that request never came, having the truck with the engine running is of little use.

The numbers put on the table also do not help close the gap. It is repeated that the UME deployed 500 troops on the first day, a figure that translates to about 7 personnel per affected town. For some it is proof of a showy deployment; for others, confirmation that without a formal request no operation is valid. With Sánchez in India and the Defense Minister on another front, the chain of command becomes the great black hole of the narrative.

The Poyo tributary that had no sensors

The Júcar Hydrographic Confederation later admitted that in the barranco de la Horteta, as it passes through Torrent, "there is no sensor", and estimated that the total flow at its confluence with the Poyo "could have been about 3,500 m³/s", that is, seven times that of the Ebro. The data fuels the thesis of those who have long pointed out that planned hydraulic works were never executed, under neither PP nor PSOE governments.

At that point political noise enters. One sector blames the parties that for decades questioned infrastructure, including the Turia diversion. Another responds that the paralysis of public works is cross-cutting and that blaming a single acronym is magical thinking. The shared conclusion, almost the only one, is uncomfortable: forty years without undertaking what was planned.

Aid that does not reach farmers

Outside the television spotlight, the drip of data continued to undermine the official version. The government excluded from DANA aid 80% of farmers and ranchers, according to sector organizations, which called the conditions "a mockery". Added to this was the protocol detail: the official funeral for the victims, held on December 8, 2024, was not attended by any member of the Executive, though the King and Queen, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and Isabel Díaz Ayuso were present.

The picture is completed by a curiosity circulating as a historical contrast: the image of Franco traveling to Valencia after a flood and meeting with engineers and military commanders to coordinate the removal of mud. It is used as a yardstick, not nostalgia.

Where the analysis gets stuck

In the Valencian Courts, Mazón's censure did not pass because Vox voted against in a secret ballot, reopening the question of how long the president can hold on and with which partner he sustains the Govern. Meanwhile, the underlying question remains unanswered: if the problem was competences, warnings, or works, why did no one close the city in time.