They are still looking for answers to what happened in the residences of the elderly during the pandemic. Five years after the first version of the protocols that prevented the derivation of elders who were residing in senior centers, relatives of deceased and different groups were met on Tuesday in front of the Supreme Court to request truth, justice and repair.
In memory of the more than 7,000 deaths during the worst months of the pandemic, the conveners have concentrated surrounding wheelchairs to honor the elders that, despite being infected, were not derived. “From the Government of the Community of Madrid they decided who had the right to die and who not,” said one of the spokesmen of the Association of Truth and Justice that has taken the floor.
Employees of seniors have also participated in the concentration. Mar Jiménez recalled the impotence that she and her companions felt during those months in which the virus expanded in the elderly centers. “They died in our hands, we had no means to help them,” he explained. “We become anonymous heroes in a system that has so many times turned our backs,” said Carmen, another employee, who has also asked the autonomous government to provide residences with “fair budgets to give quality attention.”
7,291 Truth and Justice, the platform for the dignity of the elderly in residences (Pladigmare), the Madrid coordinator for the defense of the Public Pension System, Democratic Union of Pensioners and Retirees of Madrid, Workers’ Commissions and the General Union of Workers have been the summons of this concentration.
The Marea de Residences platform, which has also attended, has denounced the “signaling that has been made from the Government of the Community of Madrid to those people who are fighting to achieve that justice, towards the work of our movement and towards family members.”
Although the regional executive has transferred on Tuesday his respect for this concentration, the spokesman of the government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, Miguel Ángel García, has returned to load against the calls, which he has defined as “political platforms that have legitimately decided that demonstration”.
In a joint manifesto, the conveners have explained that “Madrid was by far the region in which the worst situation was lived, both for the large number of deaths from the population in residences (with only 15% of the national population, concentrated more than 35% of deaths in residences), and by the horrible situation lived by each of those affected in its dramatic final.”
Ramona Carvajal’s mother died in a residence in April 2020. “They will pay for what they have done”, those were the last words he directed to his parent when he said goodbye, before he was sedated. Since then, it seeks that “justice be done with those people who did not have the option of being able to save themselves”, who could not access health care.
“The only thing we are looking for is that it is recognized that these protocols existed, that it is recognized that it was done wrong and that they ask for forgiveness. Nothing more,” explains Carvajal, who hopes that the new judicial advances in the investigation of what happened in the residences “give a little light to the people who suffered this situation.”
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