MadridThe situation of the Minister of Justice and Interior of the Generalitat Valenciana, Salomé Pradas, worsens as details of the fateful 29 October become known. As revealed by TVE, he lied this Thursday when he stated in statements to the media that the Spanish government had not offered him resources from the Military Emergency Unit (UME) until the afternoon. In a shot of images from a meeting held by Pradas with his emergency team that morning, the TVE cameras capture how the councilor conveyed to the attendees: “For example the UME, which has made itself available to to be able to move here”, can be heard from the ambient sound.
In the last few hours, it had already been published that the representative of the Spanish government in the Valencian Country, Pilar Bernabé, contacted Pradas on three occasions: at 12:23 p.m., at 12:48 p.m. and at 2:00 p.m. It is in a fourth communication that, finally, the regional government requests the intervention of the UME in Utiel and the entire emergency device is activated with the establishment of the Integrated Operational Coordination Center (Cecopi) at 4.18 pm. Pradas’ version is that neither Bernabé, nor the Xúquer Hydrographic Confederation nor the Spanish Meteorological Agency had issued “worrying warnings” about Utiel and the Magre River, and that it was the town’s mayor who warned her of the overflow around 2 p.m.
This revelation about Pradas’ day is not the only one that leaves her in a bad place. This Thursday was also evident in some statements in À Punt in which she assured that, despite being responsible for Emergencies, she was not aware of the existence of the system of mass alerts to citizens through messages on mobile phones. He explained that it was a technician who, around 8pm on Tuesday 29 October, warned of the Es-Alert tool. An audio published on the Cadena SER reveals, however, that an hour earlier the need to send these mass messages to citizens was already being discussed in Cecopi.
These are two false statements by Pradas discovered in a few hours that leave the minister in a very delicate situation. This Friday the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, gathers all the baron of the party to address the DANA situation. The mysterious lunch of the Valencian president, Carlos Mazón, on Tuesday, October 29 – he has not yet explained who he was with, beyond assuring that he was “on work” – also places him in a complicated position. Why didn’t he leave this lunch considering the downpours? He did not join the Cecopi until 19:00 in the afternoon, as has been known in the last few hours.
