Emergency Deputy Director and Utiel Mayor to Testify on DANA in Catarroja

Jorge Suárez will appear for the third time on May 4, while Ricardo Gabaldón will be the first mayor summoned on May 7.

Generic image of a judge's gavel on legal documents in a courtroom.
IA

Generic image of a judge's gavel on legal documents in a courtroom.

The Deputy Director of Emergencies for the Generalitat, Jorge Suárez, and the Mayor of Utiel, Ricardo Gabaldón, have been summoned to testify in the Catarroja courts as part of the investigation into the management of the DANA event on October 29, 2024.

The investigating judge has set May 4 for Suárez's third appearance as a witness. Previously, he testified for eight hours on December 4 and over four hours on December 17, where he mentioned delays in the ES-Alert system due to linguistic corrections and doubts from former counselor Salomé Pradas about using the phrase "stay at home."

"The ES-Alert was delayed due to linguistic corrections of the Valencian version or the doubts of former counselor Salomé Pradas about whether the expression "stay at home" could be used."

Jorge Suárez · Deputy Director of Emergencies for the Generalitat
The High Court of Justice of the Valencian Community (TSJCV) has reported that Suárez's new statement will take place at 9:30 AM. In his first statement, Suárez, the highest-ranking official present at Cecopi, confirmed that he had already considered issuing a mass message to the population before 5:00 PM, almost three hours before it was finally sent. He also detailed that a disagreement over the Valencian version of the message was one of the reasons for the delay.
Additionally, the investigator has summoned Ricardo Gabaldón, Mayor of Utiel, for May 7 at 9:30 AM. Gabaldón will be the first of 26 mayors from municipalities affected by the DANA to testify. Among the summoned municipalities are Paiporta, Catarroja, Sedaví, Algemesí, Requena, Chiva, and València. The magistrate has also agreed to incorporate into the case calls between a witness and the mayor of Sot de Chera from October 31, 2024.
Recently, on March 31, Suárez testified in a Llíria court that the Presidency of the Generalitat ordered the location of a call about the DANA between a technician from the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) and another from 112. This call was manipulated and leaked to various media outlets and disseminated by accounts of the Popular Party, including that of former president Carlos Mazón. The manipulated audio suggested an incorrect forecast, a fact disproven by the subsequent publication of the complete conversation.