Valencia leader Carlos Masson has resigned over his handling of the deadly floods

The president of Spain’s Valencia region, Carlos Masson, has resigned after months of pressure over his handling of last year’s flash floods.

A total of 229 people died in cities in the Valencia region on October 29, 2024, and another eight died in neighboring regions in Spain’s worst natural disaster in decades.

Many in Valencia blamed Masson for the scale of the tragedy because of the way he and his government reacted that day.

The regional president is understood to have spent almost four hours at a restaurant with journalist Maribel Villaplana as the floods wreaked havoc and he was absent from emergency meetings for most of the day.

Masson’s government also failed to send an emergency alert to the phones of Valencia residents, warning them of the flooding and giving advice until after 8:00 p.m., when dozens of people had already died.

“I can’t go on any longer … I know I made mistakes, I admit it and I will live with them for the rest of my life,” Masson said when he announced his decision, adding that he had to cancel his schedule for the day to take responsibility for the crisis.

“I apologized and I say it again, but none of the (mistakes) were due to political calculations or bad faith.”

Polls show an overwhelming majority of people in Valencia want Masson, of the conservative Popular Party (NP), to step down over his handling of the floods.

There have been monthly protests demanding his resignation, most recently on October 25 when around 50,000 people took to the streets of Valencia. Masson has made fewer public appearances in recent months due to the abuse he has received from members of the public.

However, his insistence on attending a memorial service for the victims on the first anniversary of the tragedy last week angered relatives of those who died, and many of them shut him down during the ceremony.

Masson appeared shaken by the experience, which appears to have prompted his decision to resign.

His announcement came the same day Maribel Villaplana, the journalist he had lunch with on the day of the floods, testified before a judge investigating possible negligence.

According to Spanish media reports, Villaplana told the magistrate that Masson “constantly sends messages on his phone” and that at one point he received “a lot of calls.”

Masson will continue to be a member of the regional parliament, meaning he will have immunity from prosecution.

During his resignation announcement, Masson criticized the centre-left government of Pedro Sánchez, accusing it of blocking aid to his region “solely to cause us political damage”.

Masson has become an increasingly problematic figure for the PP over the past year, with fears that his unpopularity threatens to undermine the party’s electoral prospects not just in the Valencia region but across the country.

However, his replacement is complicated by the fact that the PP relies on the parliamentary support in the region of the far-right Vox. That party, which is gaining ground from the PP in the polls there, will have to agree with his successor.