Mazón was activated on the day of the DANA storm, just after Vilaplana received a message about the devastation in Utiel.

BarcelonaThe Valencian president, Carlos Mazón, showed no signs of concern during the lunch he shared with journalist Maribel Vilaplana on October 29, the day the DANA storm devastated the province of Valencia, leaving 223 dead. This was revealed by sources close to the journalist, who explained that during the meal, which took place in a private room at the El Ventorro restaurant, Mazón spoke on the phone several times, but "at no point did he give the impression that anything was wrong." It wasn't until right after lunch that the Valencian president began to take action related to the DANA storm. But what had happened minutes before? According to information obtained by ARA, the journalist received a message from a close contact with a tweet from À Punt in which the mayor of Utiel alerted the public to the critical situation in his municipality with a video and urged residents to stay indoors. The message was received at 5:39 PM and the communicator responded with a surprised expression. They were both still at the restaurant.

Although sources close to the journalist maintain that Vilaplana neither showed her the video nor alerted her, the fact remains that Mazón, just six minutes after Vilaplana received the message, called the president of the Valencia Provincial Council, Vicent Mompó, as he himself confirmed in an interview, to ask for the phone number of the mayor of Utiel. He didn't get through, as the mayor himself also confirmed. Mompó, who was at the Integrated Operational Coordination Center (Cecopi) in Eliana, didn't answer the phone and called back four minutes later, at 5:50 p.m. It was then that they managed to speak, and the Valencian president asked for the phone number of Ricardo Gabaldón, the mayor of Utiel, given the news reports that the situation in the town was dire. This, according to sources at the Valencia Provincial Council, was the reason for the call. In this first call between Mompó and Mazón, the former, "nervous," conveyed to the president that "measures had to be taken," as he himself explained to the media on November 22, after a plenary session that brought together the affected mayors. Later, Mazón would call the mayor again, according to Mompó's account. At 6:27 p.m., Mazón informed him that he had contacted the mayor of Utiel, who had confirmed the emergency in his municipality, where six people would ultimately die. However, the Valencian government did not send the alert message to the population's mobile phones until after 8:00 p.m., by which time the situation was completely out of control. By the time Mazón called the mayor of Utiel, the first town affected by the downpours on October 29, the Magro River had already overflowed its banks hours earlier, and there were already missing persons. In fact, the Generalitat requested the deployment of the Military Emergency Unit around 3:00 p.m., almost three hours before Mazón wanted to contact Gabaldón, also from the PP.

The mayor, also from the PP, was bewildered

In an interview on the program Saved Speaking on La Sexta on December 8th, the mayor suggested that Mazón was unaware that morning of the situation in Utiel, where by 2:00 PM cars were already being swept away by the storm, yet he went to lunch with Vilaplana. "I want to believe that no one informed him that Utiel was flooding," Gabaldón asserted, justifying why the president maintained "his schedule," which included "this working lunch, according to him." He reiterated that he preferred to think it was a case of ignorance: "I can't imagine any other explanation," he added.