Carlos Mazón resigns."I can't take it anymore," he said in a press conference at the Palau de la Generalitat, accompanied by his entire government. He resigned as president of the Generalitat, exactly one year after the devastating floods, and when the social, political, and legal pressure on him had become unbearable. Mazón acknowledged his"own mistakes." "Those that place me at the center of political criticism," he said. The first:"I should have had the political foresight to cancel my schedule and travel to Utiel," he said regarding his controversial lunch at Ventorro with a journalist, which lasted almost four hours."I will live with the mistakes of that day for the rest of my life," he lamented."I have apologized, and I apologize again today. But none of the mistakes were due to political calculation or bad faith."

In fact, sources close to him confirm that after the plenary session of the Consell, to be held in Alicante this Tuesday to formalize the departure of Vice President Gan Pampols, Mazón will reduce his schedule and follow his doctor's advice. However, these sources do not clarify when his resignation will take effect. Until it is formalized, the 12-day period for submitting candidacies for the Presidency of the Generalitat will not begin. Following this, there is a period of between three and seven days to convene the investiture session, and two months to elect a president.

Mazón, therefore, continues today as president and beyond his resignation from that position seems determined to continue as a deputy, that is, with the guarantee of immunity, safe from the judge's investigation.

What is clear is that the future of Valencian politics remains in the hands of Vox, because the PP's intention is to invest a new interim president of the Generalitat to complete the reconstruction until 2027. Without an agreement with Vox, the Valencian Community would go to elections.

"I appeal to the responsibility of that majority to elect a new president of the Valencian Generalitat," Mazón stated in a clear message to Santiago Abascal's party."I am referring to that active and functioning parliamentary majority that has abolished the inheritance tax and brought free education for children aged 0 to 3."

Mazón has given a personal assessment and referred to the "days of remembrance surrounding the anniversary as heartbreaking, difficult, tense, and at times cruel." Even so, he acknowledged his share of responsibility insofar as"rumors spread due to a lack of timely explanations."

Not only that."We didn't request a national emergency declaration because the government said it wasn't going to send in more troops. We discovered they were going to abandon us for political reasons," he explained, now publicly agreeing with the PP president, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who advocated for requesting it.

Mazón stated that they did not know there were fatalities"until the early hours of the 30th." "From the morning of that day, we took on the immense and unimaginable task alone."

"Now that the first anniversary of the worst tragedy in our community has passed, I've decided to take a more personal look back," he explained."Throughout this time, I've always maintained the same stance. Faced with such a grave situation, talking about a personal matter, organizational issues, or my political future seemed frivolous. I accepted that burden from the beginning." "I'm the target of criticism, noise, hatred, and tension," he added."Perhaps that's the biggest obstacle to overcome," he concluded, after praising the reconstruction work carried out by the Generalitat in recent months.

"I've put aside all personal political calculations, because I know my life changed forever on October 29th," he emphasized."I've never been oblivious to public opinion, but I've tried to fight." Mazón argued that his enduring for a whole year has been to try to prove his truth: "Months ago, it seemed impossible that anyone would believe many of the arguments we've defended from the beginning, such as the Júcar River Basin Authority's failure to warn about the Poyo ravine, or AEMET's announcement at 6 p.m. that the storm was heading towards Cuenca..."

"I hope that when the noise dies down, society will be able to distinguish between a man who has made a mistake and a bad person," he declared, contrite, referring to the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez.

On October 28, 2024, the public debate revolved around the possibility of the America's Cup returning to Valencia, while behind the walls of the Palau de la Generalitat they were salivating over polls that showed the PP (People's Party) nearing an absolute majority. But the next day, everything was swept away. On October 29, 2024, a DANA (isolated high-level depression) claimed the lives of 229 people in Valencia and brought the legislature to its knees.

Mazón has been in the spotlight ever since, questioned both inside and outside his party since it became known that on that fateful day he had lunch with a journalist for almost four hours. The Ventorro incident would forever haunt him. A year later, the restaurant episode was compounded by the parking lot incident where he accompanied Maribel Vilaplana. The funeral for the victims of the DANA storm on the first anniversary of the tragedy made it clearer than ever—with Alberto Núñez Feijóo as a privileged witness—that he is the one who bears the brunt of the families' anger. So, to the social pressure from the streets was added this week the pressure from the party headquarters in Madrid.

Within the party, it was acknowledged that the funeral was a point of no return, a turning point that left Mazón in an"untenable" position. This affected him, but also the Valencian PP, which aspires to continue governing. The question is: How could someone whom his own party leader portrayed as"knocked out" remain at the head of the Generalitat? Vox has been the one fueling what was nothing more than an illusion all this time.

Mazón has survived on life support thanks to Santiago Abascal's party, without whose agreement Feijóo would have been completely hamstrung in resolving the Valencian problem. Vox gave Mazón a lifeline by allowing him to pass the 2025 Generalitat budget, the so-called reconstruction budget. They have sustained him throughout this period, a strategy that has also allowed Abascal to rub salt in the wounds of the PP and highlight Feijóo's weakness. The public confrontation with the PP that Vox has displayed throughout Spain has not been the same in the Valencian Community, where the relationship with Mazón has been smoother than ever.

This prevented the PP from orchestrating Mazón's swift departure. The Valencian PP does not hold an absolute majority in the Valencian Parliament, and any transitional replacement would have required Vox's approval. The best-positioned candidate in the regional parliament to succeed Mazón, the mayor of Valencia, María José Catalá, is not exactly favored by Abascal's party. This explains why the PP's spokesperson in the Parliament, Juanfran Pérez Llorca, the architect of the agreements with Vox, emerged as an alternative. In any case, only Mazón can press the button to call early elections. And until now, he had resisted doing so.

Those close to him say that in all these months Feijóo never called him to ask him to resign. Moreover, at the Palau de la Generalitat, the rise of Miguel Tellado and Ester Muñoz was seen as an opportunity. While both had distinguished themselves by their staunch defense of Mazón, it was Muñoz who, for the first time, showed him the door this week, publicly leaving the decision to resign in his hands.

Isolated within his party and on the verge of a new election cycle, Mazón has had no choice but to step aside. Political and social pressure has been compounded by a legal siege. The Valencia Provincial Court's decision to summon Vilaplana as a witness—he is scheduled to appear this Monday—gave carte blanche to the Catarroja judge, Nuria Ruiz Tobarra, to focus on the Ventorro incident. First, she requested Mazón's phone call log from that afternoon, and then she demanded the journalist's parking ticket from the parking lot where Mazón accompanied her.

Mazón's contradictions

On paper, the judge's objective is to determine the exact time they were together in order to ascertain what conversations between Mazón and Salomé Pradas—the former regional councilor under investigation—the journalist may have overheard. In practice, the request to Vilaplana to provide the ticket reopens the uncomfortable debate about the president's whereabouts on the afternoon of October 29, that is, during the critical hours of the storm.

The conflicting accounts of what he did or didn't do that afternoon have, in fact, ultimately destroyed his credibility, as even members of his own party acknowledge. Mazón has never stated what time he left the restaurant or what time he arrived at the Palau de la Generalitat. The journalist has had to provide the times—also with conflicting accounts.

When he initially stated that they left El Ventorro around 5:30 p.m., the Presidency of the Generalitat placed Mazón's arrival at the Palau at 6:00 p.m. When Vilaplana confirmed in a letter months later that the lunch actually lasted until 6:30-6:45 p.m., the Presidency began referring to his arrival at the Palau"well before 8:00 p.m." The problem is that Mazón was also offline for 37 minutes, from 6:57 p.m. to 7:34 p.m., supposedly after saying goodbye to the journalist. During that time, at 7:10 p.m., Pradas called him to inform him of the ES-Alert, but Mazón hung up on her.

The other major contradiction in Mazón's testimony was his arrival time at the Cecopi (Emergency Coordination Center). While initially allowing the theory that he arrived before the ES-Alert was issued to circulate, when the judge began focusing her investigation on the delayed and erroneous alert, Mazón confirmed that he arrived at the emergency meeting at 8:28 p.m. From then on, his message has been that he had nothing to do with drafting or sending the ES-Alert. Pradas, however, made it clear this week that she was aware of everything. That said, the former councilor maintains for now that they did not wait for Mazón to send the ES-Alert, nor did he give any orders regarding it.

Even so, the judge has him in her sights, and has offered him the opportunity to testify voluntarily as a suspect due to his protected status. In fact, this is what has led the Valencian PP to ask the national party headquarters in Madrid in recent days for a negotiated solution for Mazón, that is, to"not abandon the president" as was done in the past with Francisco Camps or Rita Barberá.

The People's Party (PP) had given Mazón leeway to lead the reconstruction efforts and buy himself time to improve his standing in the polls. The Alicante leader dismissed Salomé Pradas and Nuria Montes, brought retired Lieutenant General Francisco José Gan Pampols into his regional government, embarked on a headlong rush forward with a narrative of confrontation with Pedro Sánchez's government, and had even planned another cabinet reshuffle for this Tuesday. Twelve months after the devastating floods, Mazón resigned. It happened exactly one year after the ill-fated visit to Paiporta with the King and Queen and Sánchez, a visit that served as the first warning that such a tragedy would change everything. There was no turning back.