Author: Leah Pattem
Mazón has finally resigned. A year too late, but at least he’s gone. The question that lingers is not just why now — but what took him so long?
For twelve long months, Mazón has staggered on like a political ghost haunting a grieving nation. His party, the Partido Popular, never forced him out. Instead, they stood by him every step of the way, offering loyalty just to save their own names, long after it became clear his position was untenable. And so, when Mazón announced his resignation today, he was allowed to do it on his own terms – framed not as disgrace, but as an act of dignity. It was anything but.
The truth is that Mazón should have been forced out by public outrage following his deadly mismanagement of the Valencia floods in which 229 people were killed, not ushered to the exit on his own timetable. The families of those lost in the floods deserved that much but, even now, Mazón has tried to cast himself as the victim.
“I know I made mistakes. I acknowledge them and I will live with them all my life,” he said in his farewell speech. “I have asked for forgiveness… But none of them were due to political calculation or bad faith.”
It’s hard to know who he’s mourning for here – the victims, or himself. Later, he added: “I hope that when the noise dies down, society will be able to distinguish between a man who made a mistake and a bad person.”
But Mazón’s second greatest mistake after inaction on the day of the devastating floods, it was the full year that followed. A painstaking 365 more days spent clinging to power, refusing to face the consequences, showing little empathy for the families whose lives were shattered by floodwaters.
So why resign now? Why this moment, after a year of bloody-minded survival? Timing. The journalist with whom Mazón was dining as the floods began – the same four-hour lunch that became a symbol of his apathy – is due to testify today as a witness. Whatever she says is likely to be damning, and perhaps Mazón knows the truth is finally closing in, leaving him no room to hide.
He has tried to frame his departure as a noble stand against political persecution, as a last defiant gesture against Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government, but no one is buying it.
What’s also troubling is how he managed to hold on for so long. A year of scandal, fury and grief, and still the system of justice dragged its feet through the mud. With such sluggish institutional pursuit of accountability, Mazón’s endurance in office is not just a reflection of his own cynicism, but of a political system that refuses to act until it has no choice.
Spain, a country now facing the brunt of climate breakdown cannot afford such complacency. Accountability isn’t a distraction from governance, it’s the foundation of it. If we cannot properly investigate and learn from disaster, how can we hope to protect our people from the next one?
Mazón’s resignation should not be the end of the story. It should be the beginning of a reckoning – with him, with his party and with a political culture that still mistakes self-preservation for leadership.
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