The story of the former Vigil de Quiñones military hospital in Seville (now the Doctor Muñoz Cariñanos hospital) was a story of nonsense at the end of 2020 as it headed towards its reopening with too many open questions. Some of these questions have been resolved over time, but in recent years, Moreno’s “star hospital” has added other more striking ones. The latest is the report revealed here by this newspaper, in which the Council’s auditors accuse the government of breaking the law by selecting as urgent a 13-month, $18 million job. More anecdotal, but significant, was also the change of name of the health center, which was renamed after an ETA victim despite the fact that it was the option least voted for by health workers, to whom Moreno himself was entrusted. They gave it whatever name they chose.
But let’s go through it in parts. February 1, 2021: The Junta de Andalucía, which had then applied the perimeter closure in half of the municipalities, opens the Covid-19 emergency hospital in Seville in the facilities of the old military hospital. Moreno inaugurated the first phase of the center when neither the first phase of the works had been carried out nor the second phase had been authorized. It is worth remembering at this point that the Moreno government resorted to an emergency contract for works that did not foresee the imminent opening of the military hospital in Seville, but rather provided for an execution period of more than a year.
This first was one of its four “openings”, the following ones having taken place in February 2022, April 2022 and March 2023. “The exception created in 2020 with the appearance of the pandemic was not the same in 2021, and the use of this type of contract is not justified, whose long duration [13 meses] It cannot be considered as linked to the resolution of an imperative and immediate need, which allows to free oneself from the essential principles of public procurement, because the situation has become more predictable and, therefore, not in accordance with the nature of emergency public procurement, says the ministry’s report of the auditors, revealed this Monday by elDiario.es Andalucía.
The military hospital in Seville, where 698 professionals currently work (most of them in the nursing department), had been abandoned and closed for more than a decade. The SAS, in its allegations, explained this level of negligence, attributable to the previous PSOE administration, by defending that the legal framework of the pandemic and the emergency treatment constituted an “inevitable opportunity” to reopen these facilities at that time. “Thus, it would not have been understood that, given this possibility, it would not have been used,” the Council argued. But the interveners respond that these arguments are due to “a series of value judgments” that have nothing to do with their “non-compliance with the regulations.”
2.5 million without justification
A first phase of work had been approved, by hand, at the beginning of 2021. But in March, the SAS drew up a supporting report for “a second phase of work”; and in May another emergency procedure for “the renovation and redevelopment of spaces” in the hospital, “as well as conventional hospitalization units”. The Council’s Intervention denounces that at this stage, there is “no evidence of what actions would be strictly essential to alleviate the most urgent needs, prevent or repair the damage arising from the emergency situation”.
In addition, the report says that it should have been taken into account that “we are in May 2021, with a very moderate pandemic and that they should have been hired according to the ordinary procedure.” In the documentation on the military hospital, there are emergency contracts for the development of the project and the management of the construction (May 2021) and another for the “expansion of electric power (July 2021),” referring to this intervention without documentation.
The SAS resolution by which the final value of the emergency works of this hospital is set and approved dates back to December 22, 2021, for an amount of 18.1 million euros, “which means an increase in the estimated value of the initial contract of 2.5 million, without any evidence having been sent demonstrating that these are new necessary benefits covered by the Public Procurement Law”, also denounces the subsequent audit report.
In April 2022, the Andalusian president estimated the investment for the renovation and reopening of the old military hospital at “more than 72 million euros”, highlighting “its key role in the worst moments of the pandemic, when it became a Covid-19 emergency hospital”, and acknowledged that “with the two phases of work completed, the army has eight new hospital floors, 320 hospital beds and a spinal trauma unit “unique in Andalusia”.
According to the auditors’ report, the law requires that, for this type of contract, a “compelling necessity” be proven. The SAS director defended that at that time “there was no room for emergency works that would only involve the execution of what was necessary to remedy the event that occurred or to satisfy the unexpected need, since it was a question of completing the facilities (…). The auditors reject this argument: “These statements simply violate what is expressed in article 120 of the Contracts Code.” They also warn that the European Commission, on April 1, 2020, sent a written communication to the member countries with indications on the use of the public procurement framework in the Covid-19 emergency situation, requiring that “the use of this procedure be exceptional in nature” and that “all conditions must be met cumulatively and must be interpreted restrictively.”
The name, for a victim of ETA
But the current Doctor Muñoz Cariñanos Hospital also has another peculiarity regarding its current name and this brings us to Moreno’s penultimate inauguration. We are talking about the manipulation of the referendum announced by the President of the Council, revealed here last February, after the Transparency Council forced the Council to provide the Vigil de Quiñones family with the results of that vote in the so-called Seville health workers were going to decide on the name. The day after signing that resolution addressed to the family of the military doctor who accompanied “The Last of the Philippines” during his detention in the church of Baler between 1898 and 1899, the then Vice Minister of Health resigned from his position, as reported by this newspaper , before moving to private health care.
It is worth remembering that President Moreno had stated verbatim in February 2022 that “the government should not be the one to decide the name of the new hospital”, calling on health workers because “you are the ones who should name this center”. Moreno had announced with great fanfare the holding of a referendum among health professionals in the province of Seville so that they could choose the new name of the old military hospital in the “most democratic” way.
At the beginning of March 2023, a year after that promise, the “Hospital Dr. Muñoz Cariñanos” was born, replacing the old official name in homage to the doctor murdered by ETA in 2000 and with all the signage of March 20, 2023. in the full opening (and last inauguration by Moreno). Muñoz Cariñanos finally named a health center after a referendum that, as we have already said, was not very democratic, since the name of this doctor victim of terrorism was the one that received the fewest votes among the four options proposed by the Council to the health workers of Seville and that only confirmed what the family suspected internally, that the new name could have been decided in advance.
Muñoz Cariñanos Hospital currently offers inpatient health care to patients in internal medicine, pulmonology, spinal cord injuries and adult and adolescent mental health; Day hospital, equipped with chairs and beds for the administration of inpatient treatments; in the diagnostic area: radiology, ultrasound, MRI and CT scan; as well as Pharmacy, Blood Bank, Laboratories … and all the support and administrative areas that any hospital needs, according to sources from the health center consulted by this newspaper.
The sources detail that at the time of the summer period in which we find ourselves, and following the planned Vacation Plan, two operating rooms of Major Ambulatory Surgery (CMA) and minor surgery are also operating, in addition to seven of the ten operating rooms. The practice of endoscopies also resumes with the idea that by October 1 all surgical activity will be completed. Likewise, the ICU continues to develop its activity in the units located at the General Hospital and the Rehabilitation and Traumatology Hospital.
