The scientist banned by the PP from the Madrid Assembly comes to the interview this Tuesday with three studies of her authorship under her arm. María Victoria Zunzunegui (Bogotá, 72 years old) sits at a bar table in Retiro Park and starts talking about them while she flips through them. They have nothing to do with the PP or the Madrid president. They were published more than two decades ago, when student Isabel Díaz Ayuso had not yet begun her political career. They are about good aging, the specialty to which Zunzunegui has dedicated her life. She orders a latte, but forgets the drink. The reason for the appointment is that the previous afternoon it was known that the popular group in the Assembly had denied her appearance as an expert, requested by Más Madrid, but for a long time she evaded the matter. She passionately summarizes her findings on how loneliness influences dementia or how poverty during childhood predicts the pace of aging. After 20 minutes, she enters the issue that has turned her into a protagonist against her will: “Why am I telling you all this? Because I want you to see that I am a research professional. I am a scientist. I am not a politician. “I want to be useful to improve the living conditions of the elderly in Madrid.”
On Friday, Zunzunegui received a call from Más Madrid deputy Alodia Pérez. She informed him that they had proposed his name to appear before the 17 parliamentarians of the parliamentary committee on Family and Social Affairs. These types of visits by members of civil society are frequent in the regional chamber. Associations. Unions, employers or academics usually testify for 15 minutes and then answer questions. The popular group decided this Monday to ban Zunzunegui, remembering that she was one of the seven members of the citizen commission for the truth in the Madrid residences. This group of experts, brought together at the request of associations of victims’ families, published on March 15 of this year a harsh report on the management of the Ayuso Government during March and April 2020, when 7,291 people died in nursing homes. .
Nothing is said about this report in the Más Madrid letter motivating the invitation, which indicates that its purpose was for the epidemiologist to report “on necessary measures to reduce the impact of epidemiological outbreaks in nursing homes.” But the PP spokesperson, Carlos Díaz-Pache, replied that they anticipate fraud because the citizen commission in which Zunzunegui participated “is an unrecognized entity” and his report “attempts to supervise the action of a previous legislature.” Emilia Sánchez, representative of Más Madrid, responds that the reason for this “preventive censorship” is unprecedented. “It’s first of democracy,” she says. “In Parliament we talk about public affairs and if you don’t like it, you prepare your arguments, but don’t veto them.”
In addition to having participated in that commission, Zunzunegui has a doctorate in epidemiology from the University of California and a retired professor from the School of Public Health of the University of Montreal.
Ask. What would you have liked to tell parliamentarians?
Answer. I would have told you about two axes. On the one hand, the need to limit the business of dependency, because the problem with public-private partnership is that it works through contracts with companies whose main mission is profit. We cannot blame companies for that because it is their reason for existing. But the Madrid Government has to give contracts with sufficient economic allocation to maintain the quality of services. That does not happen. Contracts are won by companies with the smallest budget and without quality control. The victim is the elderly person.
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On the other hand, I would have insisted on the need to establish indicators of quality of care. We are missing a lot of data. How many die in nursing homes? From what? How many suffer urinary infections, falls, ulcers…? When we have all this we will be able to know where we failed.
Q. And why have they vetoed it?
R. Truth to be told I do not know. I think it’s out of habit now. If you don’t think like they veto you. I am a leftist person. That is not a secret. But I have ethics and I am not a radical. I speak with data, which is data taken from the Transparency Portal of the Community of Madrid.
Q. Have you participated in politics on the left?
R. Of course not. I’m not a politician. I am a scientist. I have always worked with data. The thing is that all my life I have done research on social issues that they don’t like: feminism, immigration, poverty, gender violence or children. These are topics that I always approach from the scientific method. I am a quantitative person and what I ask of the Community of Madrid is that if they do not like my research on their residences, that they use the data to see if they reach different conclusions. That is the scientific method. But all these people do is disqualify.
Q. Have they attacked her?
R. When we published the report from the citizen commission, an article appeared in Ok Diary saying that four or five years ago I went to the Podemos headquarters in Torrejón. I went there to talk about universality and equity in the National Health System. I never refuse an invitation. Vox has never invited me, but very diverse people have, for example employers from the senior sector.
Q. You know the data from the first wave very well. One of the statistics that Ayuso’s defenders usually use suggests that the biggest catastrophe occurred in the residences of Aragón and that the media hides this information to harm the president. They say that 90% of the total deaths over 65 years of age in Aragon lived in residenceswhile in Madrid only 45%.
R. I know that statistic very well and it is misleading. I, who dedicate myself to data, see how they play with numbers. Imagine that only 10 people die in a region and nine do so in a residence. You would have a very large figure of 90% that makes you think of a great disaster, while the much lower figure for Madrid can give the false impression of having contained the problem.
This information tells us the place where the people died. In Madrid many people died inside the residences, but also outside them. This could be because the virus spread in the general population. In Aragon, on the contrary, the virus was well controlled in the general population and, therefore, the proportion of deaths within residences was higher.
However, the most important thing is to know what the risk of dying was for a person who lived in a residence. This is achieved by dividing the deaths who lived in residences in Madrid (9,470 if we include deaths in hospital) by the total number of people estimated to live in these centers (44,000). One in five residents here lost their lives in March and April 2020 alone, far higher than any other region.
Q. But normal people see something like that on Twitter and fall into the trap.
R. What I recommend is that you look carefully at what is above in the numerator and below in the denominator. That way they don’t fool you.
Q. What is going to happen with the citizen commission report?
R. The relatives are distributing it to all the authorities. The King, the Ombudsman, all the groups in the Congress of Deputies and the Assembly of Madrid, the State Attorney General’s Office and that of Madrid. Now we are waiting for the answers.
![María Victoria Zunzunegui, this Tuesday in the Retiro park in Madrid.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/63FFLTRJAFE5DAN6Z6YMJEGOZM.jpg?auth=ba2c857640745af73fbf47ba0a42d9d9a09e2df76d0c0bd73fcead6c0fe57059&width=414)
Q. Why are the families’ legal cases not prospering?
R. I think the judges have adopted a comfortable position. The topic does not inspire particular sympathy and they see that it is complicated because they must review medical records, interview workers, doctors, know who gave the orders…
Q. How will this matter end?
R. I think there are many people committed. The relatives are asking for justice and we are determined to make known what happened because it is key to correcting the errors and preparing for the future. Today the residences are the same or worse than before the pandemic. Everyone will tell you. The deaths of thousands of people have not served to improve residences. Only by recognizing our mistakes can we think about how to fix things. For me it is the basis of this entire fight.
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