The president of Spain’s Valencia region, Carlos Mazón, has resigned after months of pressure over his handling of flash floods last year.
A total of 229 people died in towns in the Valencia region on 29 October 2024, with a further eight dying in neighbouring regions, in Spain’s worst natural disaster for decades.
Many in Valencia blamed Mazón for the scale of the tragedy because of how he and his government responded that day.
It emerged that the regional president had spent nearly four hours in a restaurant with a journalist, Maribel Vilaplana, while the floodwater was wreaking havoc and he did not attend emergency meetings during much of the day.
Mazón’s government also failed to issue an emergency alert to the phones of Valencia residents warning them of the floods and providing advice until after 20:00, by which times dozens of people had already died.
“I can’t go on anymore… I know that I made mistakes, I acknowledge it and I will live with them for the rest of my life,” Mazón said as he announced his decision, adding that he should have cancelled his schedule for that day to take charge of the crisis.
“I have said sorry and I say it again, but none of [the mistakes] were due to political calculation or bad faith.”
Polls had shown that the vast majority of people in Valencia wanted Mazón, of the conservative People’s Party (PP), to step down because of his management of the floods.
Monthly protests were held demanding his resignation, most recently on 25 October, when an estimated 50,000 people turned out on the streets of Valencia. Mazón had been making fewer public appearances in recent months because of the abuse he received from members of the public.
However, his insistence on attending the memorial service for victims on the first anniversary of the tragedy last week angered relatives of those who died and a number of them barracked him during the ceremony.
Mazón seemed shaken by the experience, which appeared to prompt his decision to resign.
His announcement came the same day that Maribel Vilaplana, the journalist with who he had lunch on the day of the floods, testified before a judge who is investigating possible negligence.
According to Spanish media reports, Vilaplana told the magistrate that Mazón “was constantly texting on his phone” and that at one point he received “a lot of calls”.
Mazón will continue as a member of the regional parliament, meaning he will have immunity from prosecution.
During his resignation announcement, Mazón criticised the left-wing central government of Pedro Sánchez, accusing it of blocking aid to his region “purely to cause us political damage”.
Mazón has become an increasingly problematic figure for the PP over the last year, with concerns that his unpopularity threatened to undermine the party’s electoral prospects not just in the Valencia region but nationwide.
However, his replacement has been complicated by the fact that the PP relies on the parliamentary support in the region of the far-right Vox. That party, which has been gaining ground on the PP in polls there, will have to agree to his successor.
