The judge instructing the investigation into the management of the DANA of October 29, 2024, which left 229 dead in the Valencian Community, has added a new relevant element to the case. An order of the head of the court of Catarroja,
The data, obtained from a charge of 15.10 euros on Vilaplana’s credit card, has led the magistrate to focus on the agenda of the acting president of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, with whom the journalist had met during the afternoon of the disaster.
The investigator considers that the delay in issuing the alert is an essential element in the case and that an earlier warning could have prevented part of the tragedy.
How the timeline of the encounter was reconstructed
In a first attempt, the court asked the company that manages the parking lot, Interparking, for the entry and exit times of Vilaplana’s vehicle. However, the company reported that the license plate records are automatically deleted after a year and that the journalist did not have a user in the parking application, so there was no data associated with her stay.
In the absence of records, the judge decided to reconstruct the chronological sequence by means of the payment of the ticket. Interparking then sent a list with all the transactions of the day, including the times associated with each movement. With this information, the Justice Administration Lawyer crossed the data with the numbers provided by Vilaplana and verified that the only charge for 15.10 euros corresponded to an exit recorded at 19:47:45, which makes it possible to establish precisely the time when the journalist left the parking lot.
The order also orders Interparking to formally certify the time of entry linked to the same payment, in order to complete the traceability of the use of the parking lot.
Lunch and the long after-dinner conversation at El Ventorro
The confirmation of the schedule fits with the declarations of the person in charge of the restaurant El Ventorro, where Mazón and Vilaplana had lunch that day. According to the owner, the meal ended around 17:00 hours, although both remained in the restaurant until between 18:30 and 19:00, when there were no more customers due to the storm.
After leaving the restaurant, they walked together to the parking lot of the Tetuán square, located a short distance away. There they said goodbye, according to both parties. Vilaplana explained that he remained in the car for some time answering messages and turning off his computer, although he did not say for how long.
The time of payment calls into question part of the version of the Valencian president, who had claimed to have arrived at the Palau de la Generalitat “well before 20:00”. However, it is on record that Mazón did not show up at the Cecopi meeting, in La Eliana, until 20:28 hours, when the massive alert had already been sent. The judge is now trying to delimit the time frame between the farewell in the parking lot and the arrival of the president at the Palau.
New proceedings to shed light on emergency management
The investigator has ordered new actions that may provide key information on the management of the weather episode. Among them, has requested the Emergency Coordination Center recordings of communications maintained on 29-O between a supervisor of 112 and technical staff, through the Coordcom system.
In turn, a second supervisor of the service has been summoned to testify as a witness to reconstruct how the flow of information was managed internally during the most critical hours.
