Mazón spent four hours dining at El Ventorro on the day of the DANA floods

Mazón's lunch at El Ventorro: phone off and alert never sent

On the afternoon of 29 October 2024, a Tuesday, the president of the Valencian Generalitat was eating in a private room at the El Ventorro restaurant while the floodwaters were devastating the province of Valencia. He entered at 15:00 and left at 18:45. In between, almost four hours with his phone turned off. The private meal with journalist Maribel Vilaplana is the fact on which everything else rests: a year and a half later, the matter still has not a single person held responsible. No one has resigned.

It is worth separating the fact from the story. What can be verified is the gap in his diary and the legal responsibility. The Generalitat was the administration obliged to lead the emergency and issue the alert to the population, according to the Ley 13/2010 de Protección Civil y Gestión de Emergencias de la Comunidad Valenciana (Valencian Community Civil Protection and Emergency Management Act 13/2010). Anything beyond that — what was discussed, what peine afterwards — enters the realm of conflicting accounts, and this article does not take them at face value.

What is known about Mazón's meal at El Ventorro

The restaurant has private rooms, which helps explain why the appointment went unnoticed. The timeline is the most repeated: entry at 15:00, exit at 18:45. Three hours and three quarters. For a weekday meal, that is a wide margin; for a coordination meeting during a declared weather alert, it is a hole.

The comparison that has circulated most is not political but professional. Anyone with a position of responsibility knows that two hours of after-meal chat with coffee and a drink leaves the afternoon useless. The most uncomfortable detail is not the duration, it is the silence: the phone turned off for much of the afternoon, with warnings coming in and the Emergency structure looking for its highest authority.

Some maintain that the invitation came earlier and that the final stretch was added on, and some suggest that the after-meal lingered longer than expected. Neither is documented. What is certain is that, at the moment when the administrations should have been chaining calls, one of them was not available.

Who was supposed to send the DANA alert?

The question has a technical answer and it is written down. State and regional regulations attribute to the Generalitat the direction, management and issuing of the alert in emergencies of this type; the central government intervenes by providing resources when requested. This is the thesis that is most insistently upheld and the one that leaves least room for interpretation.

That does not close the map of responsibilities. Apart from the regional government, the equation also includes the Confederación Hidrográfica (Hydrographic Confederation), the Delegación del Gobierno (Government Delegation), the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Emergency Directorate. The discussion about whether the hydrological warning came late or was misinterpreted remains open, and none of those bodies has admitted an error.

The underlying problem is one of incentives. An emergency protocol only works if someone takes the unpopular decision to mobilise a million people for something that might not happen. No one wants to be the one who closes roads and suspends classes based on a forecast that might fall short. That calculation, repeated in every administration, is what turns a warning into a tragedy.

Maribel Vilaplana: the offer from the Valencian public broadcaster and the statement

Maribel Vilaplana is a journalist and holds no public office. Her name entered the equation for two reasons: the meal on 29 October and, according to the accounts that have circulated, an offer to head the Valencian public broadcaster that she would have rejected. That offer has not been officially confirmed.

In a statement reported by the press, Vilaplana expressed her respect and solidarity with the victims of the DANA and their families, and regretted that her decision to remain in the background might have caused pain. She justified that silence by her wish not to fuel the media circus and to prevent her name from being used as a political instrument. In practice, it is the confirmation that the matter has become a dispute over the narrative rather than an investigation.

The sequence matters: first the meal, then the catastrophe, later the name and, finally, the statement. When the order of events is reversed in public conversation, the debate stops being about the alert and becomes about the people.

Ten days without resignations and a blame game with no culprits

Ten days after the flood, no official had resigned and the exchange of accusations between administrations kept escalating without anyone accepting their share. The pattern is familiar: when the political cost of admitting a mistake exceeds that of sharing it out, it gets shared out. And while it is shared out, the families who have lost everything are still waiting for an explanation.

Some point to an internal settling of scores, because reaching the presidency of the Generalitat requires having survived more than one ambush. And some recall that parliamentary arithmetic gives nothing away: a motion of censure is won with an absolute majority, not with abstentions. Without the numbers, indignation remains a statement.

The contrast is often cited with other public officials who at that same time resigned within hours over scandals of a strictly personal nature. The comparison stings because it is not about ideology but about reflexes: some leave on their own and others hold on for ten days with the victims' families in front of them.

The manager's profile: from private business to public office

One recurring line of analysis does not point to the party but to the selection of cadres. The argument is that a profile like that of the current regional president, in the private sector, would hardly have risen above a mid-level management position; in politics, by contrast, loyalty and the ability not to make waves weigh more than technical competence. It is not a trait exclusive to one party: it is a system that rewards docility and punishes dissent.

From that comes an uncomfortable consequence. Teams are designed not to overshadow the boss, and when a real emergency arrives — a cold drop, a fire, a pandemic — the scaffolding collapses. The management of the DANA did not fail for lack of resources, these voices argue, but for lack of people with the authority to decide without consulting.

The hypothesis about the relationship, without public evidence

Part of the noise surrounding the case has nothing to do with the alert or with competences. Versions circulate about the nature of the relationship between the two that are not supported by any public evidence, and that this article does not take as true. The person affected has expressly asked that her name not be used as a political weapon.

It is worth saying bluntly: the legitimate interest lies in the four hours without a phone, not in anyone's private life. When speculation takes the place of the file, public debate loses exactly what was needed — the minute-by-minute reconstruction of who knew what and when — and gains a spectacle that clears up no responsibility.

What can happen from here

With the material available, it is foreseeable that the matter will continue to be fought out in the political and media arena, and not in court. If official documentation appears — call records, coordination minutes from that 29 October, a timeline of the hydrological warnings — the discussion about private life will collapse on its own. If it does not appear, the case will continue to feed on rumour, which is the cheapest way of clearing up nothing. The unknown is not whether there will be more headlines, but whether any of them will carry a case number underneath.