After several decades at the Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF) headquarters, Jon García breathed a sigh of relief and retired. At the Beasain factory (Gipuzkoa), where his father and grandfather also worked, he shared a section with several friends. Today, at 67 years old, he regrets that five of them are gone. “They were all killed by the asbestos from the factory,” he says. Like them, another 6,982 people have died since 1998 in Spain due to being in contact with this mineral, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE). Used as a construction material until the 1970s, thousands of workers have been exposed for years to the carcinogenic effects of asbestos without knowing it. Next Thursday, Asviamie, the platform that García now represents, and other associations of affected people will gather in front of Congress to demand that a compensation fund be approved that already “does justice” in countries such as France, Italy, Belgium or the United Kingdom .
García regrets from his home in Beasain that the approval of the fund has been stagnant for years: “Whenever it has been close to candy, something has happened and everything has been ruined. It’s exasperating, we’ve been like this since 2013 ″. That year, the Basque Parliament approved turning the idea into a bill, but ran into a first competition problem. “Until 2017 we did not register it in Congress [Asviamie impulsó la proposición]. Then, the Government of Mariano Rajoy rejected it, but a few months later he changed his mind ”. After more than a year of negotiations with Ciudadanos, who shared the Congressional Table with the PP, the situation was unblocked and the project began to be debated at last. It was spring 2018.
When the dialogue was about to come to fruition, early elections were called in February 2019. In García’s words, “everything went to the trash can.” It was time to start from scratch. With the new government still in office, it was unfeasible to hold plenary sessions, so the project was stalled. At the beginning of 2020, Pedro Sánchez opened his term in full conditions and the context seemed to be favorable again. But the pandemic arrived.
On April 13, 2021, eight years after it was conceived, Congress definitively approved the bill with the only abstention from Vox. But the obstacles for García did not end there. “When we thought it had cleared, the Board of Congress began to continually extend the discussion. Every week they announced a new postponement, ”he explains incredulously.
Pilar Garrido, secretary general of Podemos Euskadi, has been García’s political confidant ever since. The deputy does not hesitate to point out the resistance of the Government as the last obstacle to approve the compensation fund. “The reasons are economic. It seems that the Minister of Finance [María Jesús Montero] the accounts are not balanced and he wants to postpone it. Right now, the only obstacle for it to be approved is the PSOE, ”he says on the other end of the phone. The Socialist Party has not ruled on the matter. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance dodges the problem and delegates the matter to the Ministry of Inclusion and Social Security, which has confirmed to EL PAÍS that “these issues take time.”
Like García, but 600 kilometers from Beasain, Ricardo Torregrosa heads the victims’ association (Apena) in his hometown. Cartagena is the municipality in Spain with the most deaths from contact with asbestos: 210 according to official figures, although Torregrosa’s calculations point to higher figures. The uniqueness of Cartagena does not lie only in its dead, but also, as Torregrosa explains, in the courts. “We did not win a sentence, it is impressive,” he exclaims indignantly.
In 2017, only 10 people had been compensated in the Murcian town for having been in contact with asbestos. At that time, the unofficial calculations of Torregrosa placed the death toll at 507. Today, he assures that the death toll has risen to 630, but the justice has not processed any more compensation. “In 2018 and 2019, they were all dismissed. Since 2020, due to the pandemic or whatever, there is no news. There are people buried whose families do not know anything about asbestos ”, he relates with clear signs of helplessness.
To solve this stagnation, García and Torregrosa are clear about the mirror in which to look at themselves: “France has had an automatic diagnosis process since 2001 that prevents victims from going to trial and speeds up compensation in less than six months.” To shape the long-awaited fund, both refer to the notes of the “longed-for” Paco Puche, an activist from Malaga who died last July: “Looking at the French example, the cost in Spain would be around 210 million euros per year. The State would put 12% (about 25 million) and the rest, the companies ”.
The neighboring country’s model, known as FIVA (Fonds d’Indemnisation des Victimes de l’Amiante), would have allowed Eugenia Martín from Madrid to fire her husband, a Metro worker for more than 35 years, in another way. “When we sued, Julián was already practically terminal. My daughter and I had to take responsibility for everything. He died before the trial was held, ”he explains uneasily. Months before a Social Security pulmonologist diagnosed him with lung cancer, Metro told him that his health was “perfect.” “If the reviews had been continuous, my husband would be alive,” laments Martín.
In the legal process, Julián’s widow points out that the transport company did not collaborate at any time: “No one ever came to see him or asked about his health. They paid us tickets of medicines and taxis to go to radiotherapy, but the communication was only based on mail. They were not capable of taking him off due to professional illness because, they said, they did not know how to do it ”.
In 2020, Metro de Madrid recognized that Julián had fallen ill from the asbestos present in its facilities and compensated Eugenia Martín (59 years old) with 193,000 euros, the first compensation in the history of the company for this reason. “It is a slow and stressful process, you live it with a lot of anxiety. In the end, your husband is gone and you are facing judicially a gigantic company ”, assures the widow.
On October 1, the European Parliament urged the removal of all asbestos from member countries, an expensive process that requires great security measures. In Spain, its use has been prohibited since 2002, although it is still present in industrial warehouses, schools and other buildings. From her home in the capital, Eugenia Martín demands that all companies recognize the problem and offer security to their workers, with specific recognition to avoid reaching situations as painful as that of her husband: “As long as that step is not taken, asbestos it will continue to kill ”.
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