Twelve minutes after the program prior to the issuance of the documentary ‘7,291’, on those killed in residences in Madrid during the first two months of Pandemia, the RTVE program that has directed Xabier Fortes had already placed Madrid at the head of the deaths in communities in Spain. Ahead, they added, from others with more population, such as Andalusia, they explained, without taking into account the enormous density of the Madrid region. Fortes also recalled that Madrid was the region with the greatest excess mortality in Europe, and influenced several moments of the debate in those killed in residences and the protocols that limited the derivations from these establishments to the hospitals.
These deaths have been in recent years, and they remain, the main battering ram against President Isabel Díaz Ayuso. An issue with which no one feels comfortable among the popular, difficult, controversial, with many edges and that deals with decisions taken at a time of maximum welfare pressure, with an increase of more than 700 dead in residences in just a week, and when the UCIS of the hospitals were about to collapse.
The broadcast tonight of the documentary ‘7,291’ simultaneously in the 2 of TVE and in the 24 -hour channel, has been preceded by that debate about the pandemic, when five years were completed, led by Xabier Fortes and in which four journalists have participated: Javier Casqueiro, Manuel Rico, Lucía Méndez and Paloma Esteban. A debate that has ended up being mostly what happened in the residences of elders in Madrid. Throughout the day, which the pressure on this documentary and the facts it recounts was increasing.
In addition, several politicians have participated in the program, interviewed outside the set: the former socialist vice president Carmen Calvo; the former social policy counselor Alberto Reyero; The Minister of Health, Mónica García, who during the Pandemia was a deputy of the opposition to Ayuso in the Madrid Assembly; and the general secretary of the popular Madrid, Alfonso Serrano. Ángela Arreba, the daughter of a deceased in Residence accused the president of “institutional violence” and “dehumanizing” families.
Carmen Calvo has not hesitated to remember, along with the political decisions that had to be taken, her personal experience as a patient, in which she confesses that she was very close to death. And Reyero, responsible for Madrid residences when the pandemic began and left of her responsibility for President Díaz Ayuso at the end of March 2020 to give the Single Command to Health, has denounced once again, as she has done these years and also in a book she wrote, the protocols of Madrid that excluded the transfer to the elderly of residents with disabilities or dependencies or dependencies. “That is intolerable discrimination and something we have to rebel,” he said.
The Minister of Health has opted to reinforce the Spanish health service, as the main lesson extracted from the pandemic. The political decisions made by Madrid then, especially the protocol, it seems to him that they were especially bad: “Propaganda was prioritized, they could have asked NGOs to enter the residences,” he defended, to prevent those person from “died unworthy.” Therefore, he asks that in the Madrid Executive assume political responsibilities.
The PP load against RTVE
The voice that was heard from the PP was that of the Secretary General of the Popular Madrid, Alfonso Serrano, who has connected from the door of the Isabel Zendal hospital and has denounced what he considers manipulation of RTVE in his treatment of this issue. “Balances is normal, what is strange is that the TVE puts the focus on those killed in residences in Madrid, it must be that those of other regions are less important.” He has defended the figure they give, 4,100 deaths, according to the data of the National Statistics Institute, has concluded.
Serrano defends the reasons why there was excess mortality in Madrid for his density: “We have the airport, through which millions of people pass, and in the Madrid subway they travel every day as many people as the entire population of Euskadi.” The derivation protocols of residents to hospitals, he says, were also applied in Aragon and in Catalonia.
Confinement, empty streets, full balconies and the consequences that all this has had in our lives have given rise to a cluster of memories about a period that looked like a dystopia and after which, as a first conclusion, the participants in the debate that “we do not go better”.
The premiere in RTVE of the documentary ‘7291’, directed by Juanjo Castro, has unleashed a very well -controversial, intensified by having coincided with the day of the Plenary celebration in the Madrid Assembly. The issue has given rise to a tense crossing of accusations between opposition parties and President Isabel Díaz Ayuso. From the early morning, the regional government mobilized, sending a letter to the president of RTVE demanding that the balance of the management of the management in the pandemic that the Madrid president had made the day before the Madrid president, as well as was done with Castro’s, which they described as “biased.” From the entity the claim was rejected, describing it as “interference.” For his part, Castro also defended his work through a statement on social networks: «There have been no subsidies or public aid. Nor do I belong to any party or political organization ».
The deaths of elderly in residences during the pandemic, without being referred to hospitals, is the stone in the shoe of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, that the opposition does not cease to remind him periodically. And in recent days, they have shown in the pressure, which has been finished with RTVE’s announcement that the documentary would issue. Something that had already requested more Madrid to the Madrid autonomous channel, Telemadrid, without obtaining an answer.
Research commissions
The deaths gave rise to an investigation commission that opened in July 2020, when the Madrid government formed a coalition of PP and citizens. The electoral advance of May 2021 meant the dissolution of the Assembly and the closure of all commissions, including this. And the results of the elections marked a change of sign in the Executive, of which the voters erased the orange formation. A new attempt to reopen the commission again was rejected with the vote against the PP and the abstention of Vox.
The 7,291 deaths have been used in debates, launched as an accusation in holders and even printed on gigantic size posters on two facades of buildings in Vallecas and the Elipa by more Madrid.
The opposition has been removing the chapter of the so -called ‘protocols of shame’, instructions to homogenize the derivation criteria of the residences of adults to hospitals in the worst of the pandemic. According to Carlos Mur, the high position of the Madrid health that signed those protocols, during his appearance in the investigation commission of the Assembly on the matter, they were not strict orders but a guide. The regional government denied that they had gone from being mere drafts.
One of the sources of the documentary ‘7,291’ was Alberto Reyero (CS), the Minister of Social Policies and responsible for residences at the time of the Pandemia. But only then: at the end of March he was relegated from his functions, when he granted Díaz Ayuso the Single Command to Health. Reyero states that he had already expressed in the first weeks his disagreement with the treatment that was taking place to residences, and after being separated his criticisms did not cease; On the contrary, he came to publicly declare that the protocols were neither ethical nor legal.
In April 2023, the Truth Commission was established, which from the PP was seen as a ‘Citizen Court’. It was presided by the emeritus of the Supreme Court José Antonio Martín Pallín, and was promoted by the tide platforms of residences and ‘truth and justice’. Almost a year later, he presented his report: with the official data, between March and April 2020, 9,470 people lived in residences in Madrid: 7,291 in the centers themselves and 2,179 in the hospital. In their conclusions, they pointed to an “inadequate” action of the regional government, since “more than 4,000 people could have saved their lives.” No one from the regional government wanted to participate in that commission, which they did not consider independent and linked to the ideological left.
In the final chapter of the recommendations of your report, prosecutors are requested in this case “proactively.” But in the regional government they put in value that to date, there have been more than 60 judicial sentences archiving or dismissing the demands filed by the death of people in residences.
What happened in these centers for the elderly during the first months of the pandemic, where the virus acted with particular hardness, rethinked to the model of this type of establishments, which are now wanting smaller and more manageable. But in the eyes of the president of the Spanish Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology, José Augusto García Navarro, “neither Madrid nor any community abandoned the elders.”
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