His name was Antonio Olmedilla Toledano, he was 84 years old and “he died abandoned, like a dog, alone,” says his daughter, María José, as soon as he started seeing the documentary ‘7291’. The film, directed by Juanjo Castro, was broadcast last night in the 2 and the 24 -hour TVE channel, just when five years have passed since the beginning of the pandemic. In it, various protagonists of what happened in the first wave of the Covid report how they lived it and why they acted as they did.
Antonio, internal in a residence in Alcalá de Henares, was one of the 7,291 people who perished in the Community of Madrid between March and April 2020 without receiving medical assistance. “I still have the blame for not having taken it, not having listened to the doctor’s recommendations and having taken it out of there when it was on time,” said María José when the documentary had already ended.
María José lives in a townhouse. On the low table of the room he has prepared some photos of his father in which he appears happy, surrounded by his people. Two others, one with her in black and white and another with her mother, Toribia Sánchez, presents them directly with the frame. “He died in Ballesol, the residence with more dead by Covid-19 of the region,” he says. Located just 10 minutes from his house, 84 people during the pandemic lost their lives.
Something nervous is shown before the documentary issuance. Little by little it will relax, listening to what is told, think about what you think. It’s 23:10 hours and 2 has been placed on your television for a few minutes. From that moment and for two hours, nothing more matters. It seems that even its collection of CDs and vinyl, and the paintings that decorate their living room, will also keep silent. It all starts, again.
They are just numbers
The tape directed by Castro is structured in several chapters. The first one wonders how residences were before the pandemic. “Atibored from people,” says María José with the look at the TV. Building with a robe on the legs, this public employee in a town hall in the region does not stop nodding or denying in silence as opinions appear in the film, creating an imaginary cross continues with its head.
She doesn’t stop responding. If Carlos Mur appears in the documentary, then former general director of socio -health coordination, saying that most of the residents are very dependent people, María José emphasizes that her father was a moderate case. “It was very good from the head, we only took him to the residence because he had just out of pneumonia and cost him to walk, but nothing more. We paid 2,270 euros per month. We rent your floor, we used your pension and still had to pull savings, ”he recalls.
‘7291’, whose broadcast brought together 1,278,000 spectators on average and 15% of screen share, according to Barlovento Communication, intercalate images of the Investigation Commission in the Madrid Assembly with the Citizen Research Commission that sought the truth of what happened. María José did not know the existence of the latter, despite integrating tide of residences. “It is incredible the coldness with which they talk. The dignity of people care about shit, and I’m sorry to use this word, but for them they are only numbers, ”he says when he hears several responsible for the private sector of Madrid residences.
Odyssey begins
On March 9, 2020, the Regional Government decided to limit visitors to residences. These days the Calvary begins for Antonio and his daughter, a nightmare that still chases her. A day later, María José took medications to the residence. “I could see him between crystals, at reception. He called him every day and it was fine, ”he wrote in an email that referred Fernando Peinado, a journalist from El País who appears in the documentary, and the Complutense City Council after what happened.
On Monday 16, María José could barely talk to her father due to the hip that she suffered. A day before he had fallen. A wound was made in the arm and a strong blow on the wrist was hit. “He told me that he didn’t even know the time he had been on the floor, because they closed the doors of the rooms.”
On Tuesday 17 they told him that he had fever peaks, and that since Sunday he lived with two other Covid-19 patients in a triple room. “I told them to isolate him, that they had not tested, but they shielded themselves in the residence protocol,” he adds. That day, María José was able to talk to her father just a few minutes.
On Wednesday 18 he was already nervous and disoriented, and continued with hip. After many attempts, the call was cut. Given the situation, her brother and she appeared at the residence. “We talked to the doctor, who had neither gloves nor mask,” he recalls. “He told us that it was best to leave him in the residence, that the hospital was saturated and that it was better to die here than in the hospital hall. My brother and I did not know what to do, and in the end we continue his advice, ”says María José.
On Thursday 19 he barely received information about Antonio’s state. Throughout these four days, he made 30 calls to his father and 23 to the residence. He still saves mobile screenshots, printed. On Friday 20, at 07.00, they tell him that he has died two hours before. “I do not have a damn written role except the certificate of his death. Everything has been totally opaque, with a brutal misinformation, ”says María José, as in ‘7291’ of Castro do María Paz Villanueva, Mercedes Huertas, María Jesús Valero and Ramona Carvajal, all of them daughters of residents who declared before the Citizen Research Commission.
The last thing Antonio told his daughter were two words: “I’m bad.” After his death, the fight continued. María José faced conflicts that she never thought she would have to face. Things as nimic as recovering his father’s belongings became a continuous battle. “The residence took a month to give me its belongings, and its mobile phone did not appear, I still don’t have it,” says something Alicaída.
A relief omission
“What a pity this, is that it is as they tell it,” says María José again and again before the images of the documentary. Alberto Reyero, former social policy councilor during the pandemic, is one of the people who appears most on the tape, especially when talking about the protocols that did not allow the derivation to the Hospital of Users of Sick Residences, except for those with private insurance, who could go to their exclusive hospital centers.
María José did not know Reyero, nor that these protocols are called “shame protocols”, but it seems an adequate name. “I don’t understand how I could have taken my father to the hospital if I had been living with me and why just because they were in a residence,” he complains. “It is a bad praxis, a negligence and an omission of the relief,” he adds.
Courts file the case
As such denounced it the same year 2020. The court decided to file the case without even heard it. Rabies and outrage were giving way to impotence and resignation. After the years, together with the tide of residences, María José denounced the facts again. This time he could declare. He did it this year, on February 13. “Now they admit that my father was denied healthcare, but that as the case is already filed by another court they cannot do anything,” he emphasizes with a few words loaded again with anger.
As ‘7291’ progresses, María José is clearer: “This was a particular natural selection that they did. The old people did not deserve to live the same as the others, much less those without private insurance. It was a political order. Above now they don’t even be ashamed to stop lying, ”he explains.
Almost at the end of the film, this neighbor of Alcalá de Henares does not stop asking questions that are sure to be repeated in thousands of homes. “Are these people in jail? Is it going to be no person in charge? Is justice to continue archiving cases? ” And goes further: “I don’t want to use thick words, but what they did was an indiscriminate murder.”
Two hours after the beginning, María José has revived one of the worst passages of her life. “The documentary is totally real, even softer than we have felt the people we have gone through. It seems great to me that they broadcast it on TVE, a television that we all pay, so that it is known what was done wrong and what can we change to improve the situation, ”he says.
TVE defends the broadcast
Not everyone thinks like her. The regional government tried the same day of broadcast, March 13, which TVE reproduce a 4.44 -minute video produced by the executive itself in which the benefits and successes of the Madrid management before the Pandemic were sold. The Minister of the Presidency, Miguel Ángel García, said in his letter that the film has “a marked ideological bias that offers information that does not correspond to reality.”
The public entity took a few hours to make its response public. He rejected the request of the Ayuso government when considering it of “undue interference”, at the same time that they affirmed that “the public media cannot become spokesmen of any government institution.” Juanjo Castro, the director of ‘7291’, also said that the information he shows in his work are official data from the Community of Madrid.
“What happened was very hard, and a lot of people died. I hope that the documentary gives a boost to the families who fight for the justice that was denied to their elders, ”he tells Eldiario.es the director. Castro is still surprised by the reception of his documentary: “I present it to rooms full of people, it is fantastic. I hope it serves something, because the cause deserves it. ”
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