BarcelonaUntil Friday, three days after the DANA ravaged the province of Valencia, it was not known with whom the Valencian president, Carlos Mazón, had lunch, and what he had done until seven in the afternoon, when he joined more than two hours late to the operative meeting, with the situation completely out of control. According to several media reports, the Valencian president had lunch in a restaurant in the center of the city with the journalist and spokesperson for Llevant UD, Maribel Vilaplana, to whom he offered the management of the regional channel À Punt. The journalist, who had received praise from the president at previous events, rejected it. Although Mazón has been strongly questioned for not canceling his schedule and extending lunch until a quarter past six in the afternoon, Vilaplana has also come out with a splash.
In conversation with ARA, Vilaplana’s ex-husband, Xavi Carrau, does not understand why the focus has also been on her. “The one who has to explain the lunch is Mazón, because he is the president, and not my ex-wife”, the journalist from À Punt makes it clear. “Mazón was not where he should have been”, he adds after recalling that the regional network was promptly reporting on Tuesday the first ravages by the DANA in some towns such as Utiel or Xiva: “At two in the afternoon the mayor of Utiel informed the our medium that there were missing people, and an hour later there were already the first dead in Shiva.” In this sense, the journalist says that his ex-partner cannot be blamed for the lunch: “She can meet with the president thinking that he and his government have the situation under control.”
He also demands from Mazón to make public the call log of that day, after the Valencian president rebutted that he only received “an SMS”, and that it arrived at 8:20 p.m., from the Minister of the Environment, Teresa Ribera , who previously reported that he had called her up to four times and that she did not pick up the phone. “We’re waiting for him to show the captures of his cell phone,” he said. Carrau is clear that he misunderstood the situation, as he hinted in his last tweet without naming him directly.
Faced with the rumors that have circulated about a possible relationship between Mazón and his ex-wife, Carrau laments “the masculinity” of society: “She is an adult and a free person, if there is a mess it is his fault because he is the president and he’s married.” In fact, Vilaplana’s ex-husband published a message to X on Saturday, right after the massive demonstration against Mazón, in which he made it clear that they had been separated for seven years. “I did it to distance myself because I don’t want to know anything about all this and so that it would be known that we are separated, in the face of all the manipulations that were said.”
In fact, Carrau assures that they have a “fantastic” relationship despite the separation: “We are happily separated, we live as friends and family because we have two children in common.” He also praises the professional career of his ex-wife: “She is irreproachable.” The same cannot be said for Mazón. In this sense, he does not bite his tongue when it comes to saying that he is the most responsible for the accumulation of nonsense in the management of DANA. “He has been giving positions to incompetent people,” he says without explicitly mentioning some of the most prominent councillors, such as Nuria Montes or Salomé Pradas.
