The lower house of the Spanish parliament has agreed on the procedures for a commission that will investigate the aftermath of the devastating natural disaster that struck the Valencian Community in the autumn of last year. As a reminder, the catastrophe claimed 229 lives and left many areas of the region in ruins.
The commission decided to begin its work by hearing from those who were directly affected by the tragedy. Starting in early November, immediately after the state memorial ceremony, relatives of the victims will appear in the session hall. Such an approach has not previously been taken even at the regional parliamentary level, where similar hearings were blocked.
The list of those invited to the hearings includes not only the families of the victims but also key decision-makers from that day. Among them are the head of the autonomous community, Carlos Mazón; the former head of the justice and internal affairs department, Salomé Pradas; as well as the opposition leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Special attention has also been drawn to journalist Maribel Villaplana, with whom Mazón spent several hours on the day of the tragedy. The agenda also lists the owner of the restaurant where this meeting took place.
The commission’s work will be divided into two stages. The first will focus on establishing exactly what happened on the day of the disaster: how the services responded, what decisions were made, and where mistakes occurred. For this purpose, more than a hundred different documents have been requested — from emergency meeting protocols to recordings of telephone conversations between officials. The second stage will be dedicated to analyzing the recovery of the affected areas and finding ways to prevent similar disasters in the future.
In total, more than a hundred people are scheduled to be interviewed, and 126 sets of documents will be reviewed. The authorities aim not only to clarify the details of what happened but also to assess how resource cuts and insufficient preparedness of emergency services affected the course of events. The commission is expected to present its initial findings by the end of the year.
