Valencia mayor Catalá confirms Generalitat gave no flood warning, blames predecessor's flood plan in Congress testimony

Catalá testifies: no alert from regional government

María José Catalá, mayor of Valencia, appeared before the Congressional commission investigating the dana that struck the region on 29 October 2024, leaving 230 dead across the province and 17 in the city's southern pedanías. She confirmed that the Generalitat Valenciana did not warn municipalities of the impending flood. The Cecopi, the integrated operational coordination centre, did not alert Valencia city until 20:47, even though the first distress call reporting water entering the city came at 20:04 from a person trapped at Estación Sud.

“How could we warn the population if no one warned us that a flood was coming?”

Catalá said she personally called the regional emergency councillor Salomé Pradas at 8:56 and spoke with regional secretary Emilio Argüeso, becoming the first local leader to seek information.

A flood plan that did not foresee flooding

Catalá placed direct blame on the municipal Flood Action Plan approved by the previous city administration under Compromís mayor Joan Ribó. She read aloud a passage stating that any overflow of the Barranco del Poyo would drain directly into the L'Albufera lagoon and rice fields, not urban areas.

“What failed in my municipality on the day of the dana was the Flood Action Plan approved by the previous municipal team.”

When the special hydrological alert for the Poyo was issued at 12:20, the city's response was to contact the Devesa Albufera service and ask them to open floodgates. Catalá insisted the city council had no competence to monitor conditions upstream and was responsible only downstream. She argued this justified not using megaphones to alert residents of the southern pedanías of La Torre, Forn d'Alcedo and Castellar-L'Oliveral, where all 17 city deaths occurred.

Barcones: state resources on offer, region delayed activation

Virginia Barcones, Secretary General of Civil Protection and Emergencies, told the same commission that all state resources had been at the disposal of the Valencian regional government immediately and automatically on 29 October. She stressed that emergency management competence was clearly regional. Barcones revealed that despite meteorological and hydrological alerts issued by the Generalitat's own agencies, the regional operational level remained at zero, the lowest, until 14:11.

“We were seeing alerts from the Generalitat itself, but they remained at operational level zero. We called them: are you at zero with these alerts or is there a confusion?”

At 14:11 the region raised the level to one only for the Ribera Alta and La Plana de Utiel-Requena areas. Barcones also confirmed that the mass mobile alert (Es-Alert) sent at 20:11 required double regional verification and was dispatched by the Generalitat exercising its powers.

Defending Mazón, political tensions

The hearing exposed ongoing political divisions. Compromís deputy Àgueda Micó displayed a photograph of Catalá receiving a kiss on the cheek from former Generalitat president Carlos Mazón and pressed the mayor on whether Mazón remained the best president the Valencians could have. Catalá replied that Mazón was the only politician to have accepted political responsibility. The commission heard from multiple sources that Mazón had been at a lunch with a journalist until after 19:00 and did not arrive at Cecopi until after 20:28, almost a quarter of an hour after the Es-Alert was issued and when more than 150 people had already died.

A call for a new legal framework

In a parallel Senate hearing, José María Ángel Batalla, the former government commissioner for dana reconstruction who resigned after his university degree was found to be falsified, called for an administrative umbrella law to coordinate municipalities, regions and the state during emergencies. PSOE senator Cristina Moreno accused his appearance of being a political diversion, coinciding with Catalá's testimony in the lower house.