Barcelona, Spain – Carlos Mazón, President of the Generalitat of Valencia and leader of the conservative People’s Party of the Valencian Community (PPCV), announced his resignation on Monday, November 3, citing exhaustion and political pressure following sustained criticism of his handling of last year’s floods.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Mazón said during a televised address. “I know that I have made mistakes, I recognise that, and I will live with them all my life,” he added.
Undertaking the role of President of the Generalitat “requires a special strength that neither I nor my family have. No longer.”
He will remain as a representative in the Valencian Parliament.
The decision follows more than a year of calls to step down and face potential criminal charges over the government mismanagement during the October 2024 floods- known locally as DANA-, which killed 229 people.
Public outrage centered on the administration’s failure to activate the national emergency phone alert system until hours after the disaster began, by which time more than 150 people had already died, according to El País.
Mazón’s credibility further eroded after it was revealed that he had spent over four hours dining with a journalist at the El Ventorro restaurant on the day of the floods.
Last week, a state funeral was held in honor of the DANA victims, attended by King Felipe VI, Queen Leticia, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, and 625 family members of victims.
Read more: State funeral held for victims of the Valencia floods amidst mass protests
Ahead of the funeral, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the generalitat, laying emergency blankets inscribed with the names of their deceased loved ones. Relatives later asked Mazón to not attend the official ceremony.
Regardless, Mazón praised the work his government has undertaken in his 20-minute speech on Monday morning, highlighting the reconstruction work that began following the disaster.
“The entire Cabinet, all of them, have poured everything into rebuilding Valencia, each of them according to their own area of responsibility, and they have done so in an exemplary fashion,” he claimed.
The disgraced politician also defended his government’s actions during the floods, saying officials had acted on the limited information available at the time.
“We didn’t know that the banks of the Poyo river had burst. We didn’t know that people had died until the morning of the 30th of October, nor that the tragedy could be of such a magnitude,” he said.
However, Mazón also admitted that he ““should have had the political awareness to cancel my day’s agenda and go to Utiel,” one of the first towns affected by flooding.
The outgoing leader also accused Spain’s Socialist government, led by Sánchez, of failing to support Valencia in the aftermath of the disaster. “We wanted help, we asked for it, and we never got it,” he said, alleging a smear campaign from the political left to “take advantage of death and tragedy for political gain.”
“I know that the noise surrounding me is the perfect excuse for the [central] government to hide its own responsibilities,” he continued.
Mazón came to power in July 2023 after regional elections that saw the People’s Party form a coalition with the far-right Vox party. Such an alliance collapsed in 2024, leaving Mazón to govern with a fragile minority government.
Following his resignation, the PPCV leadership will now nominate a successor. Under the Generalitat’s rules, new candidates must be publicly presented within 12 days, after which investiture hearings and votes will be held to determine the next president.
Without an outright majority, the People’s Party will need Vox’s support to secure approval.
Featured image: Generalitat de Valencia via X
