Carlos Mazón Congress formalizes his candidacy to preside over the PPCV: "There is no appointment of the national leadership"
"He has been in politics for longer than I have," admitted
Isabel Bonig
on July 18 when the entire Provincial Auditorium of the Alicante Provincial Council surrendered to
Carlos Mazón
(Alicante, 1971) as president of the PP in Alicante. Anointed by the national leadership of the party, it was already sensed that it brought him closer to the edge of the springboard to make the final leap, first to the regional leadership and then to the Palau de la Generalitat. He played at home with the encouragement of
Pablo Casado
, and his wife, his friends
Teodoro García Ejea
and
Fernando López Miras
, and even the mayor of Madrid,
José Luis Martínez-Almeida
. It was the image of what, a few weeks before,
María José Catalá
, who will be his lieutenant, baptized as the
"Married Generation"
. However, as the still president of the PPCV remembered, Mazón had long since broken his hand. He hit power so soon that he had time to retreat, rebuild, and return.
He did not follow in the footsteps of his father, a renowned Alicante hematologist, nor that of his grandfather, a businessman who came to preside over Hercules. He found his political vocation in the Faculty of Law, leading a
student union
, Program 10, which gave him a voice in the Student Council of the University of Alicante, from where he did not hesitate to align himself with the PP, newly arrived at the Government hand in hand by
Eduardo Zaplana when we have the information
. It was 1995. By then he was already a member of New Generations and attracted the glances of the Cartagena environment. The 'popular' power was rooted in the south and with it Mazón grew until in 1999, the first legislature with an absolute majority, he was appointed director of
the Valencian Youth Institute
(IVAJ) with 25 years.
It was his leap into professional politics.
In 2003 he held the direction of Commerce and Consumption, reduced to Consumption and Industrial Safety a year later, with
Francisco Camps
as head of the Consell.
Mazón, as president of the IVAJ in 2002.EM
Zaplana's march to Madrid called by Aznar unleashed a war for control of the party between supporters of the former president and the
campers.
Mazón was one more victim. He refused to convert and
in 2007 he left the offices of the Generalitat
to, along with the rest of the purged, take refuge in Alicante, where they have survived.
"He carries the
Zaplanista
poster
, but who was not in the Alicante PP?"
Some of his close friends say that they fit him into a "liberal and open" party and not as conservative as the one led by Camps. Precisely "making a wide party" that recovers militants and voters is what Pablo Casado asked him in July.
Mazón has never renounced who his godfather was. His public career continued thanks to the support of Zaplana and his environment, which found him a place as a nursery in the municipal lists of
Catral
, a small town in Alicante's Vega Baja almost on the border with Murcia, and in the
Alicante Provincial Council
, the great bastion of the PP in the Valencian Community, the only institution that has not stopped governing since 1995. With the act of councilor in his pocket, he was fourth vice president and deputy for Infrastructure and Cooperation with Zaplana's right-hand man,
José Joaquín Ripoll
. In the party he never stopped being a member of the provincial board of directors. It symbolized the future, the resurrection of this
popular
family
.
However, in 2009 the PPCV began to implode due to different causes of
corruption
.
One of the first is the Brugal Case, which investigates alleged crimes of bribery, extortion and influence peddling in the award of public contracts for garbage collection in various towns governed by the Popular Party in the province of Alicante.
In this case, Mazón is peppered with an alleged illegal financing
of the Hercules Foundation
by a businessman in exchange for being favored in contests of the Provincial Council.
To this is added that in Valencia, the shadow of
Gürtel
that would make Camps resign in July 2011 was already planning.
To the Chamber of Commerce ... and to Eurovision
Mazón then decides to take a step back and accept the offer as general director of the
Alicante
Chamber of Commerce
, although he maintains his acts as a councilor in Catral and as a low provincial deputy. At that time he enjoyed
running
, at dawn on San Juan Beach, with his wife Mamen
and his two sons.
Also of his passion for football and, especially, for Barça.
The staunch culé
is part of
the Romerito Forum
, a group made up of Blaugrana friends named after the Paraguayan striker who signed Cruyff in 88, considered the first fiasco signing of modern Barça.
They even had a uniform: a yellow polo shirt that emulates the shirt with which
Iniesta
marked the Stanford Bridge and opened the doors of the Champions League in 2009.
The other passion that Mazón cultivated in those years is music.
He even dares to appear at
Eurovision
in 2011 with
Marengo
, a quartet formed "with friends from the university" in which he was voice and guitar.
They covered the
Y solo tú
by Bachelli.
Mazón had to sing the second verse in the purest
Julio Iglesias
style
.
They overcame RTVE's preselection and were among the 39 finalists.
In the summer of 2013 they even went on a
concert tour
around Alicante and Murcia.
As García Egea conquered his wife by playing the bandurria, Mazón is beaten by giving him a guitar and starts with versions of José Luis Perales, Julio Iglesias, Bertín Osborne, Roberto Carlos or El Puma, "the songs of our mothers."
The Marengo group, with Mazón in the center.EM
The presence on an autonomous electoral ballot came to him in 2015, but almost under the covers.
Alberto Fabra
responded to
Zaplanista
requests
to include him in the lists ... in position 13 for Alicante. The doors of the Valencian Courts were not opened to him. The PP lost 11 seats in the province and the Botànic took over the Generalitat. In
popular
hands,
only the councils of Alicante and Castellón remained, and Isabel Bonig supported a party that was bleeding with accusations, besieged by Citizens and forced to seek a replacement for
Rajoy
in the national leadership.
While Valencia gave his express support to
Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría
, Mazón publicly launched his for Pablo Casado, an image of the renewal of the party recovering its essence: that of Aznar, which was also that of Zaplana's best times. Casado's victory in 2018 already foreshadowed that there would be compensation for the Alicante man for his loyalty.
It took a year to materialize and came through an unexpected ally and a godmother who had been watching over him for a long time.
Fran Hervías
, Citizen organization secretary, offered to be his candidate for mayor of Alicante in 2019.
Macarena Montesinos
did the rest. The
Zaplanista
with the most surviving power in Congress reminded García Egea of the value they had in Alicante and their ability to fight
Ximo Puig
in 2023, repeating what happened in 1995. But the Secretary General did not need to be convinced. By the tuning they had struck, he already saw Mazón capable. The only one capable.
Mazón, surrounded by García Egea, the mayor of Alicante, Luis Barcala, and former president of the Provincial Council, César Sánchez, on the day of his inauguration in 2019.
The first reaction was to place him as
number 2
of the mayor of Alicante,
Luis Barcala
, who could not get the electoral poster off his head. As a councilor he returned to the Diputación, but this time with the staff of command. The party forced
César Sánchez
to elect his seat in Congress and raised Mazón to the presidency, supported by Ciudadanos. From the only institution in
popular
hands, he
made the leap to the provincial presidency and now to the regional one. And it does so with the
classic speeches of the PP and that now re-tune with the story of freedom
. The Alicante has given battle to the Consell by the language, resorting to the Constitutional the decrees of
Plurilingualism
, by the water, standing as a defender of the
Tajo-Segura
transfer
in the face of Puig's passivity;
He has expressed himself in favor of the
concerts
in Education and Health and has even confronted the Consell for the management of
Covid aid,
refusing to participate in the
Cooperation Fund
.
From its southern vantage point it has become a headache for the Botànic.
Mazón does it with a close attitude, the perpetual smile, his white shirt rolled up and the permanent winks to his Alicante: from a visit to the coves to his races on the beach of San Juan, without missing the games of his son, the ' Gato Mazón ', keeper in fry.
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