Guardia Civil informs judge about Utiel death

The Guardia Civil has told the judge in Catarroja investigating the management of the October 29, 2024 DANA in Valencia province that the first body found in Utiel was located at about 8 p.m. that night, according to a report cited by Europa Press. The filing was sent in response to a judicial request for the timing of the first confirmed death in the town, where six people died after the Magro river overflowed. The judge is using those timelines to reconstruct when local, regional and emergency authorities knew that the flooding had turned fatal. The Utiel submission adds a new time marker to a case that has increasingly focused on who knew what, and when. ### What did the Guardia Civil tell the judge about Utiel? Europa Press reported on May 20 that the commander of the Guardia Civil post in Utiel told the court the first body was found around 20:00 on October 29, 2024, after hours of rescue work in floodwater. The report said officers had spent much of the day “metidos en el agua realizando rescates” — in the water carrying out rescues — and were operating in separated groups. The same report said the first confirmed notice came when the chief inspector of Utiel’s Local Police, after getting out of a house where he had been trapped while carrying out a rescue, told Guardia Civil officers that he had found the body of a resident on the ground floor of a home on Ramón y Cajal street, number 20. The Guardia Civil officer’s report described that as the first “real and truthful” communication that there were deaths in the town. ### Why was the judge asking for that exact timing? On May 12, 2026, the Catarroja judge ordered a series of investigative steps seeking to establish when authorities learned of the first death in Utiel, the first death in Torrent and the disappearance of a man in l’Alcúdia, according to Europa Press. The order also sought records linked to Utiel’s local emergency coordination body, known as Cecopal, including when it was convened on October 29, 2024. (europapress.es) The same judicial order was issued after requests from private prosecutors including Ciudadanos and Acció Cultural del País Valencià, Europa Press said. The court also asked whether the minutes of Utiel’s Cecopal meeting were sent to the regional emergency center or other institutions, and requested a copy of the municipal flood plan in force that day. (europapress.es) ### Why does Utiel matter in the wider DANA case? Utiel was the first locality to suffer flooding on the day of the DANA, in its case because of the overflow of the Magro river, according to a May 8 Europa Press report on the same investigation. That report said the judge had also asked for records of calls received by Utiel mayor Ricardo Gabaldón on October 29, 2024, and for the recording of a call he made to 112 at about 14:30. (europapress.es) Ricardo Gabaldón, who testified as a witness on May 7, told the judge that if local authorities had not closed the town’s secondary school, “hubieran muerto alumnos y padres” — students and parents would have died — because the Magro overflowed and the municipality flooded “en cuestión de minutos,” Europa Press reported. He also said he had received no warning from any institution before the flooding, and that he convened Cecopal at 13:00, while the regional Cecopi was set for 17:00. (europapress.es) ### What does the new filing say about conditions on the ground? The Guardia Civil report, as summarized by Europa Press, said communication was disrupted because officers in Utiel were spread across rescue operations and lacked transmission means linking them to the Guardia Civil command center in Valencia or to the improvised advanced command post in Requena. The report said local people using heavy machinery helped officers carry out rescues. (europapress.es) That account matters because the court is examining not only the chronology of the flooding but also the flow of information between responders and decision-makers. The Utiel report does not by itself assign responsibility. It provides the judge with a narrower factual point: when officers say they first received a verified report that someone had died. (europapress.es) ### What comes next in the court inquiry? The Catarroja court is still collecting emergency calls, local records and institutional timelines tied to October 29, 2024, according to the judge’s recent orders reported by Europa Press. Those steps include 112 recordings, call logs linked to Utiel’s mayor, the Cecopal documentation and parallel information on first fatalities in other municipalities. (europapress.es) The next developments are likely to come through further court orders and filings from the Guardia Civil, the Consorcio de Bomberos, the Policía Nacional and municipal authorities as the judge continues to build the chronology of the Valencia province DANA response. (europapress.es)