Defense filing in Catarroja

On 1 September 2026, 672 days after the 29 October 2024 storm that caused 231 deaths, defense counsel for former Valencian regional president Carlos Mazón submitted his first formal brief to investigating magistrate Nuria Ruiz Tobarra at the Catarroja court. Mazón had previously declined on three occasions to give voluntary testimony in judicial chambers, though he had addressed investigative commissions in both the Corts Valencianes and the Spanish Congress. Mazón remains a regional deputy for the Partido Popular and holds official immunity, leading the regional high court to turn down an earlier submission from the judge due to insufficient initial evidence. The 66- to 71-page brief, prepared by criminal defense attorney Ignacio Gally, follows the defense gaining full access to the judicial record on 31 July 2026 after the provincial court authorized his standing in the case. Mazón's counsel requested that the court state whether any active lines of inquiry or concrete factual allegations regarding criminal action remain open against him.

Causality and the emergency alert timing

The central argument in the brief challenges the premise that the timing of the regional ES-Alert broadcast caused the fatalities. Emergency authorities sent the alert advising residents to avoid travel at 20:11 on the evening of the catastrophe. Gally reviewed the individual case records of 41 to 42 victims in the judicial files, noting that one victim died before 20:11, several had no recorded time of death, and others died afterward, concluding that no individual causal link exists between the alert timing and their deaths.

“To attribute the outcome to the delay, it would be necessary to demonstrate that the difference between receiving the same warning around 20:00 or receiving it from 20:11 was precisely what determined that the person died.”

The submission argues that proving causation requires showing that each victim had an active, compatible device with network coverage, noticed and understood the alert immediately, and would have altered their behaviour in a way that prevented their death.

Rejection of guarantor role and the Cuenca hypothesis

The legal submission rejects any criminal liability by omission, maintaining that Mazón did not hold the legal guarantor position required for such responsibility, which the defense places on then emergency minister Salomé Pradas. The document also counters what it describes as the Cuenca hypothesis, concerning a text message sent at 19:54 by Mazón's chief of staff, José Manuel Cuenca, instructing Pradas against ordering population confinement. Mazón's lawyers state that he issued no orders to alter or halt the ES-Alert system and was disconnected during an afternoon lunch with journalist Maribel Vilaplana at the El Ventorro restaurant. Technical debates over whether the alert should advise climbing to higher floors occurred solely among officials connected to the Integrated Operational Coordination Centre (Cecopi).

Political reactions in the Valencian region

The submission drew immediate political reactions across the Valencian political sphere. Diana Morant, Spain's Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities and secretary general of the PSPV-PSOE, criticized Mazón's defense strategy in public statements and on social media.

“Almost two years later, they are still unable to acknowledge the obvious: they arrived late when it mattered most.”

Morant added that an alert sent on time could have changed the fate of 231 people, while PSPV parliamentary spokesperson José Muñoz demanded that Mazón resign his seat in the regional parliament.