A PP mayor has admitted before the judge of Catarroja (Valencia) investigating the 2024 dana that the Generalitat did not warn him about the scale of this disaster that left 230 dead. “We acted instinctively without knowing the magnitude of the catastrophe,” declared the mayor of Utiel (Valencia, 11,632 inhabitants), Ricardo Gabaldón, before magistrate Nuria Ruiz Tobarra, according to sources present at his testimony to EL PAÍS, a condition that requires telling the truth.
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The Popular Party member pointed out that, if he had not made the decision to close schools and institutes early on the day of the cold drop – a unilateral measure he took ten hours before the Generalitat then led by Carlos Mazón sent the mass alert to mobiles – “students and parents would have died.” He explained that he did not receive any official communication from the Consell about the risk in Utiel, the first municipality gripped by the catastrophe where six people lost their lives.
The relationship with the crisis managers – he explained – began at 2:00 p.m., when he contacted the deputy director general of Emergencies, Jorge Suárez; and the head of the Provincial Firefighters Consortium, José Miguel Basset. “When the red alert changes in the morning, we relay it to the population via radio and social networks,” he noted.
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The instructor noted in an order last July that Gabaldón, a pioneer in closing educational centers at 7:00 a.m. on the day of the dana – five hours before the Generalitat decreed the hydrological alert on the Magro river – reacted better and faster than the then head of the Consell, Carlos Mazón, also from the PP.