The second section of the Valencia Court has rejected an appeal presented against a resolution by the judge of Catarroja, who is instructing the case regarding the management of the dana of October 29, 2024, in which she denied the request of a private prosecution to carry out new proceedings regarding the actions of the second vice president of the Diputació de València and deputy of Roads, Reme Mazzolari, during the floods.
In an order, the Court concludes that in the investigation phase, witness statements have already been agreed upon, who can be questioned about the state of the roads, as well as about the information they received and transmitted regarding the roads and the measures that could have been proposed or adopted in this area.
The appeal of the private prosecution was based on Mazzolari's appearance as a witness before the judge, in which she stated that she was not aware of the seriousness of what happened on October 29, 2024, until around 7:00 PM, and that this information reached her through television, a point that this party did not consider "plausible."
For this prosecution, the authority or person responsible for the road area "may have criminal relevance if, having direct or indirect information about serious risks to circulation, did not promote or coordinate minimum protection measures," and referred to the road where her relatives died, arguing that if it "remained open or not properly signposted when there were already data of serious risk," the investigation should clarify "who had the legal duty to act and why no action was taken."
Consequently, she demanded that the aspect of road safety, road closures, and "the responsibility of those who had the duty to know, communicate, and act" be further investigated. She requested a series of proceedings that she considered "necessary" in order to determine whether Mazzolari's intervention should "remain in the strictly testimonial plane or whether, on the contrary, the objective data resulting from the investigation justify evaluating her citation in another procedural condition, with full respect for her defense rights."
Nevertheless, the chamber recalls that, in this case, the CECOPI was activated to direct the management of the emergency, assuming, among others, the competencies of closing roads and informing the public, so the "utility" of the proposed line of investigation, focused on investigating "generic competencies" in road matters, "required an analysis of the regulatory framework that defined the functions and obligations, and allowed affirming the position of guarantor."
Position of guarantor and scope of the investigation
This legal examination, adds the resolution, must connect with the specific results of death that are being investigated. In this sense, it emphasizes that the position of guarantor "must be established according to legal criteria and one cannot expect it to be clarified through a massive and indiscriminate contribution of data or all kinds of information regarding roads."
"The knowledge of the laws and regulations published in Spain does not require a judicial investigation," points out the Court, which reproaches the appeal for omitting the regulatory support that would allow attributing the position of guarantor to Mazzolari or other individuals, "and does not explain to what extent it would be clarified through the generic obtaining of such a mass of data and information."
Likewise, the chamber highlights that in this case "a multitude of investigative diligences" have already been carried out and that the documentation incorporated is "very abundant," so the relevance of the new requested actions "would require identifying the deficits of the reports presented or concretely indicatively establishing a hypothesis, with some objective basis, in relation to the deaths that are intended to be investigated."
In contrast, the court warns that a global inquiry into the entire disaster "would be prospective, foreign to the purposes of the criminal process and even detrimental to the handling of the procedure." In any case, it emphasizes that, according to the appealed order of the judge, "witness statements have already been agreed upon, to which questions can be asked about the state of the roads and the information they received and transmitted regarding the roads and the measures that could have been proposed or adopted in this matter."