Thousands of Andalusians driven by the White Tides They took to the streets this Sunday in all the provinces (in Cádiz they did it on Saturday) to defend public health in Andalusia. Thousands of users and professionals of the public health system who wanted to show “their total indignation at the deterioration that Andalusian public health has taken in the hands of the current political leaders”, as expressed by the spokesperson for Marea Blanca in Seville, Sebastián Recio, during the final argument of a march that he described as “a resounding success of mobilization, awareness and commitment”, based on the massive support that the call for protest has had.
The call for citizen mobilization by the Andalusian coordinator of the health surges has coincided with a critical moment in the management of the Moreno Government, whose manager of the Andalusian Health Service (SAS) has just been summoned to court as being investigated for a possible crime of administrative prevarication for allegedly abusing the emergency contracting system (by hand) once the pandemic was over. Furthermore, the demonstration was held one day after the Andalusian edition of elDiario.es revealed another “unfavorable” report from the oversight body of the Junta de Andalucía against emergency contracts for private clinics in 2022 and 2023, which denies the main line of defense of the senior officials accused in the open judicial case.
From a judicial point of view, the coordinator of Mareas Blancas has also received bad news this week as her complaints due to the collapse of health waiting lists have not been successful. Faced with the filing of the complaint by the justice system, “the clamor of the street” has been loud this weekend in the eight provincial capitals. In Seville, where the largest event was held with 50,000 attendees, according to the organizers (a figure that contrasts with the 6,000 estimated by the National Police), the message in favor of “quality public healthcare” has traveled one of the the main avenues of the city, reinforced by the beating of a drum, thanks to the batucada that accompanied the march from José Laguillo to the Glorieta del Cid.
Beyond ideologies
This beat in favor of public health that has resounded in the Andalusian capital has been supported by thousands of citizens from 40 white tide groups in towns in the province such as Mairena del Aljarafe, Osuna or Morón de la Frontera, in addition to unions such as CCOO , CGT or UGT, and political parties of the parliamentary left, such as PSOE, Por Andalucía, Adelante Andalucía or the Andalusian People’s Initiative, among other political and social organizations. “Everyone in unison defending public health,” celebrated Sebastián Recio.
In fact, leading banners during the march, faces such as Juan Espadas, general secretary of the Andalusian PSOE, since the call in Seville, or Inmaculada Nieto, spokesperson for Por Andalucía in the Andalusian Parliament, who participated on Saturday in the call that took place in Cádiz. Something that has caught the attention of Eduardo Muñoz, a resident of the Sevillian municipality of Carmona, who says he “misses” the representation of all the political groups in the parliamentary arc.
“Defending public health is everyone’s duty, but I only see left-wing groups,” Eduardo laments, holding in his hands a banner that refers to the use of emergency contracts extended after the Covid-19 pandemic. “The pandemic has been a business and we no longer know who to believe, because Moreno says that there is no money to hire doctors, but he does have money to give to large companies,” reproaches this citizen, counting on the approval of the rest of the group with the one who has traveled to the capital of Seville to defend public health.
Other posters that the protesters have carried during the rally advocate for “more staff and less corruption”, for the defense of healthcare from public institutions “whoever governs governs”, while others serve as a call to young people to defend the public health: “Young man, reflect! “Who doesn’t need public health?”
The truth is that the majority of attendees are middle-aged or older, although you can also see grandparents with their grandchildren, families with their young children and groups of young people like Minerva Calderón and Antonio José Alemany, who at 25 and 23 years old respectively, they demonstrate a high degree of social awareness because, they say, they have many people around them “suffering the consequences of the deterioration” of medical care.
“Youth have to fight to preserve a right that can be taken away from us if the Moreno Government continues to dismantle public health, especially in the towns,” claims the young woman from Seville, who remembers that taking care of the Andalusian health system is the responsibility of the Junta de Andalucía because “healthcare is a regional responsibility.” Along with her, Antonio José emphasizes the idea that the defense of public health “is not a question of the left or the right” because what is at stake is “continuing to be alive.”
Testimony of professionals
With this act of protest, Mareas Blancas wanted to warn about the “deterioration of public health” which, according to them, “is reaching an extreme of severity that we can no longer consent to.” “Long waiting lists are generating complications in chronic diseases, even in some cases, due to lack of care in adequate time, irreversible situations of the disease and deaths,” the health organization warns, also pointing out that “care delays in health centers are already calculating between two weeks and up to thirty days in some cases.”
Holding her son with one hand and a protest banner with the other, Cristina Rus explains that it is important to demonstrate to denounce delays in getting appointments with family doctors or specialists. “By never having available appointments with pediatricians at the health center, we are forced to overwhelm the emergency room to attend to a problem of our children that cannot wait two weeks or more,” explains this mother.
Once they get them seen, Cristina regrets that the consultation time has been significantly reduced. Pedro Gallego, a primary care doctor in the Cerro-Amate district of Seville, recognizes that they have “little time to be able to adequately care for” patients, because professionals are overwhelmed by the lack of personnel. This translates into “more possibility of failure,” which this veteran doctor considers “a real danger.”
Visibly worried, Dr. Gallego diagnoses that the political leaders of the Junta “are keeping everything public.” “They are leaving us bare because the goal is to do business,” he says. This professional who has been serving in primary care for decades thinks especially about older people who remain “imprisoned in their homes” because they cannot go out and do not have the attention of doctors in their homes. “The administration does not think about them,” he deplores.
At that moment, the citizen tide that swept through the Andalusian capital chanted “our healthcare cannot be their business.” A sentence to which Sergio García, a radiophysicist who works at the Virgen del Rocío Hospital, joins. This colleague from the union confesses to witnessing the “gradual deterioration” that the public system has been suffering in recent years. Speaking as a professional and as a citizen, he argues first that “we professionals are mistreated with precarious month-to-month contracts or by committing fraud in the hiring of interim workers who are not interim workers,” and then, that “since there is evidence that delay, patients are not treated when they should and that aggravates the pathology they suffer.” García also criticizes that in this context, the Andalusian Government “transfers millions of euros to private healthcare instead of investing in public healthcare.” For all these reasons, he appeals to “claim and put pressure on the public powers,” stressing that “it is a drama that there are more than a million people on waiting lists.”
These same demands run through the streets of the rest of the Andalusian capitals, which also this Sunday have been flooded with slogans and proclamations in the same key: “Moreno, listen, the people are in the fight.” According to the participation data provided by the Government Delegation in Andalusia, based on estimates by the National Police, there have been around 12,550 people who have attended the white tide demonstrations at a general level. Specifically, in Almería, there were 500 attendees, in Córdoba, 1,500, in Granada, 1,600, in Huelva, 400, in Jaén, 650, in Málaga, 1,500, and in Cádiz another 400, although the organizing organization put the number at around 1,200. the attendees this Saturday in the capital of Cadiz.
Moreno’s strategy
The citizen tide in defense of public health has ended in Seville at the Glorieta del Cid, where the spokesperson for the Sevillian tide has publicly brandished “the three major strategic errors that this Andalusian PP Government is perpetrating against public health.” Firstly, he has pointed to the “abandonment of primary care”, which he considers “the basic pillar where comprehensive and multidisciplinary care of clinical history begins”.
Next, he mentioned the error of “trying to make us believe that the private sector is the one that is going to solve the problems of public healthcare.” “The private sector is governed by completely different criteria from the public, they see the disease as a business, while for the public it is a right: they are two opposing visions,” explained this Sevillian doctor, then asking himself, “how is it going?” to solve the structural problems of the public when it works on a profit basis and does not take into consideration elderly or multi-pathological people because they are not profitable for them.”
For the health tides, it is “a strategy leading to generating a health reconversion that gives rise to a dual health services model where an impoverished, saturated and deteriorated public health care will serve the elderly, people with complicated chronic diseases or with oncological, pluripathological or cardiovascular history.” The result is that “only those who have the most resources can access these services,” he argued.
The last axis of the strategy attributed to the Moreno Government is “disconsideration towards the public and towards citizens.” “We are only left with the mobilizations, the complaints, when the users and professionals are the ones who are supporting public health,” Recio recalled. “They are not able to dialogue constructively with the white tides because they want us to be clients of a precarious market and not users who are the protagonists of our future,” he stated in front of the thousands of attendees who marched this Sunday for public health.
“These three strategies are not coincidental, nor the result of a mistake, it is a well-designed strategy that is based on appropriating the common, the public, privatizing it to turn it into a business object,” he denounced. Faced with this, “we advocate for the public because we are the people,” Recio claimed, counting on the ovation of the public who subscribed to every word with strong applause.
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