On October 29 at 6:28 p.m., the president of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, called the mayor of Cullera, Jordi Mayor, through the WhatsApp application. The head of the Consell had finished the now famous copious meal with the journalist Maribel Vilaplana, while Mayor was with two inches of water in the streets of his municipality and looking at the water levels that the Xúquer River was carrying upstream. What did you think when the president called you? “When he called me, I don’t know what state he was in… not in a state of emergency,” Mayor said on television and confirmed to elDiario.es. The call, which Mazón himself had leaked this Sunday to justify that he was aware of the impact of DANA on the municipalities, has been turned like a boomerang, based on the explanations that the mayor of Cullera is giving.
And the mayor of Cullera had been discreet and had not aired this conversation with the president of the Generalitat. A conversation that elDiario.es had known about for ten days. The call was not informative until the president of the Generalitat publicly leaked it to highlight his management of DANA day. “I don’t know where Mazón was, obviously we already know that he was not where he should be, nor do I still know why he called me. “He didn’t tell me anything about the emergency, he didn’t tell me that the Forata dam was at risk of breaking, nor did he tell me anything at all,” Mayor told Europa Press Television this Sunday.
Mazón defended this morning that on DANA day he was not “incommunicado” and that he spoke “even with people who say” that he was, “such as the mayor of Cullera.” “At 6:28 p.m. I called him. I was not incommunicado at any time, I have not denied any food,” Mazón added. It is also striking that Mazón called the mayor through the WhatsApp application, which is usually used when the user does not have telephone coverage, but does have Wi-fi.
Whatsapp call
As the mayor of Cullera explained, the ‘president’ called him on WhatsApp, something that “stranged” him because he did not have his number and had never contacted him “at all.” “When you don’t have the number recorded, you see the photo on WhatsApp, even if you don’t have the contact, and I see the president’s photo and I get scared,” he recalled.
“I mean, oysters, what’s going on? “I answer the call and I say, tell me, president, and he says, man, Jordi, nothing, it’s just that your name has come up, and I say, well, I’m going to call Jordi, and he says, how are you?” .
According to Mayor, in the call he explained to Mazón that it did not rain in Cullera that day, but in the headwaters of the Júcar, and told him that they were aware of the risk of the river overflowing. He also told him, as he has stated, that “in principle” they were “calm” because the flow of the Júcar in Algemesí was beginning to decrease.
At this point, the first mayor recalled the words that Mazón said to him then: “Good, good, good, yes, good. Well, nothing, you record my number, this is my personal number, you record it, and whatever you need, you call me.” “End of conversation. That is the conversation,” he stressed. Little more than a few minutes, as elDiario.es has learned.
Meanwhile, he stressed that at that moment he was considering whether or not to hold the Cullera municipal plenary session at 7 p.m., since he had called a security meeting at 9 p.m. “I had to make decisions about whether to prolong the suspension of schools and the measures that we had previously adopted,” he explained.
“Therefore, I go to the plenary session with peace of mind. In fact, in the plenary session, which is recorded and public, I say it: The ‘president’ of the Generalitat called me and told me that in principle all the worst has happened,” he said. These statements can be contrasted with the video of the plenary session that is posted on the Cullera City Council website.
Then, when the mobile alert was sent to the population after 8 p.m., Mayor explained that the plenary session was suspended “automatically” and it was known that the flow of the Júcar was rising again: “We began to act by evacuating and taking measures ”.
“And until 9:20 p.m., which is when we received the second beep from the cell phone, we did not have any communication from the Generalitat that there was a risk of the Júcar river overflowing,” he stated.
Asked about the reasons for Mazón’s call, the mayor stated that he still does not know or understand it. “That is why I have not made it public before: to not add more fuel to the fire, because I understand that a conversation more typical of coffee, a drink and a cigar is not what either the victims or the people who have suffered this catastrophe deserve” .
Demands that he not use it as an “alibi”
He has thus urged “to be in the reconstruction, to help the victims and for each one to assume their responsibility.” “I can tell, minute by minute, day and hour, where I was and what I was doing. “The one who doesn’t seem to be able to explain it is Mr. Mazón,” he said, to demand that he not “use him as an alibi.”
Regarding the tone he used in the call, Mayor has stressed that he does not have “much contact” with Mazón nor does he know him, but he can “say that it was not a state of emergency.”
As for the reasons why the ‘president’ has alluded to this call, he has maintained that “he is a person who is desperate and cornered by his own lies.” “I don’t know why he uses it, I don’t know what it means, because in the end the call also occurs through WhatsApp. Is it that where I was there was no mobile coverage and that’s why he called me on WhatsApp? I still don’t know,” he added.
And he asked himself “what other mayors he called” and if he contacted Paiporta, “ground zero of the catastrophe”, or with other first mayors of the Ribera Baja region. “Those that I have spoken to, he did not call anyone else,” he stressed, insisting that he “honestly” does not understand why the call occurred.
Source: www.eldiario.es
