‘7291’. They were not going to die the same

Let’s imagine 50,000 people who, due to their vital condition, are not allowed to go to a hospital. This is not an evil custom. It is a decision considered by whoever has the power to order this segregation. With that argument begins a film that has just been released. Of course, the tape has more ingredients. Given the impossibility of having adequate health care, 7,291 of these people die in a few days. In most cases they die in isolation, without the company of their children or family. This story is enough for a movie, but this time the plot is not invented, nor written by fiction creators. The characters in the film are not actors and the deceased are not extras, they are real dead people who cannot be seen.

The film I describe is not based on real events, it is simply authentic, true, it is as true as death itself. It is titled (by now you know) 7291the number of people who were left to die in the residences of the Community of Madrid between the months of March and April 2020, during the most serious period of the covid pandemic. The film premiered on November 13 in Madrid, at the Verdi cinema, after having been presented three days earlier at the 28th edition of the Cineuropa Festival dedicated to the documentary genre, which is being held in Santiago de Compostela this month. Since then it has been shown in special sessions in small-capacity cinemas in the Community of Madrid, Barcelona and Lleida in the absence of other places to program it.

It is not a typical documentary. Unlike other stories, the film does not seem to seek as its first objective to touch the sensitive fibers of those who see it. As its author, Juanjo Castro, pointed out on the day of the premiere, what he intends is to tell the facts with data and testimonies, so that the plot thread is step by step what happened. The assessment has to be made by the viewer.

Its main resources are the successive statements of those responsible for the residences, their workers, the relatives of the deceased or the medical representatives. There is no voiceover. Just listen to what they said in the only two areas in which what happened has been investigated:

First, in the Commission established in the Madrid Assembly in July 2020 until Ayuso managed to overthrow it. He called elections and prevented their continuity to prevent official knowledge of how the most inhuman and cruel act committed during the pandemic was committed and by whose order. The second investigation scenario was the Citizen Commission for the Truth in the Residences, chaired by the jurist José Antonio Martín Pallín, which between April 2023 and March of this year listened to the relatives of those affected and the workers of the centers.

In short shots interspersed with images of the hallways of the residences, dozens of people, family members and workers describe what they saw and experienced in the days of horror. As a counterpoint, the contradictory justifications of some health authorities who agreed to execute the sinister plan. It is clear that the authorities of the Community of Madrid, led by President Isabel Díaz Ayuso, decide from the moment the state of alarm due to Covid is decreed, to discriminate against people who live in nursing homes and prevent them from being transferred and treated in hospital centers. It is the macabre protocol that is invented to avoid saturating the Madrid public health network. Private hospitals, on the other hand, were on the margins of this. There was no saturation there and anyone who had private insurance could be transferred to a “paying” clinic. At that time, all public and private hospital centers depended on a single command that abandoned the duty to care for all people without discriminating based on their age or place of residence. There were at least four protocol reforms and each of them expanded the group of residents who could not go to a public hospital.

The director of the documentary also had other testimonies. That of two journalists who followed the case and especially that of the Minister of Social Policies of the Madrid Community in 2020, Alberto Reyero. He refused to accept the “selection of the species” agreed upon by Ayuso and his people and was marginalized in the Community Government. “To make the documentary I had the advantage of having known in detail what happened through the mouth of someone who was involved in the plot,” says Juanjo Castro, director of the film. He assures that it occurred to him to start doing this after reading Reyero’s book, They will die undignified.

The author produced the film without financing from anyone, without any subsidy and without resorting to the crowdfunding. He met the relatives of the deceased later. Grouped in the Marea de Residencias, this group supported the documentary as a means to continue demanding public recognition of the atrocity that the Madrid health authorities committed against their parents or relatives and to ensure that responsibilities are cleared. The justice system, before which several complaints and complaints were filed, has in almost all cases closed the case, maliciously arguing that it cannot be proven that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between the decision not to transfer anyone to the hospitals and the subsequent death. To reach such a conclusion, it is unknown what investigations they have done. The truth is that they were discriminated against for being housed in residences. But the inhuman and undignified behavior also extends to other authorities. Almost none have worked to restore their dignity.

The documentary, lasting two hours, is an entirely auteur film. Juanjo Castro, with extensive professional experience in making series and documentaries, is the director, producer and distributor. He put up the money, made it and took care of the distribution, since he couldn’t find anyone to do it in the audiovisual sector. It was something challenging for anyone who dedicates themselves to it professionally. He hopes that it can also be seen on the Filmin platform and wants to get it broadcast on Netflix and Movistar.

Let’s imagine 50,000 people who, due to their vital condition, are not allowed to go to a hospital. This is not an evil custom. It is a decision considered by whoever has the power to order this segregation. With that argument begins a film that has just been released. Of course, the tape…