“I want justice to be done.” María Consuelo V. had her parents admitted to the Domus Vi retirement home in Alcoi (Alicante), a private and public retirement home. His mother died of covid in April 2020, at the worst stage of the pandemic. The woman testified before the Court of First Instance and Instruction Number 3 of Alcoi during the first civil trial in Spain against the company managing a retirement home. In the process, promoted by the Association of Affected Parents of the DomusVi Residences of Alcoy and Cocentaina, are present 46 relatives of 18 of the 74 deaths in the first month of the pandemic (52% of elderly inmates died), with a request for compensation of more than two million euros.
The second session of the trial, held this Tuesday, was preceded by the statement of Doctor Manuel Pérez, head of the home hospitalization unit of the Virgen de los Lirios Hospital, who went to the residence on the 12 March 2020, two days before the declaration of a state of emergency. The doctor described the situation as a “massacre”, with enormous “organizational chaos”, with a “lack of staff” and without isolation of residents with symptoms. An “abandonment” and “disorganization” that he did not see in the other residences visited, he declared. A cultivator, also present at the first hearing, described the management of the center as “disastrous”.
All the witnesses experienced very similar situations. Conchín, a woman whose father died in the early hours of March 16, 2020, explained that her intention was not to “collect money” but to obtain justice. “Fortunately or unfortunately, he was one of the first to die,” he said. The man had been admitted to the hospital a week earlier due to a misplaced catheter in the residence. At the health center, they recommended that he return to the residence to avoid contagion in the hospital. But she was never isolated.
The witness recounts his last contact with his father: “They only let me in for five minutes accompanied by the psychologist, I was not isolated, my companion was next to me. [de habitación]. Just enough to give him a hug, a kiss and nothing more.
Mónica M., whose father-in-law died at the residence in the early hours of March 21, 2020, regretted that the residence did not subsequently inform her relatives of the circumstances of the death of her loved ones: “We loved one, and I think it is very reasonable, to explain to us what the process was, who treated him and in what conditions he died.
Most of the witnesses at the second hearing of the trial were women. Enrique, the husband of María Cecilia V., died a few months before the pandemic, on October 7, 2019. The woman, like the rest of the witnesses, highlighted the lack of staff at the residence: “I noticed that there there was a shortage of staff. There were plenty of staff there to humanely care for those admitted. In fact, the Department of Equality and Inclusive Policies sanctioned the residence with a fine of 40,000 euros in the context of a case prior to the pandemic for lack of staff, as reported by this newspaper.
“The treatment was not humane”
He also recalled that “certain people who have worked all their lives have the right to be well cared for”. This was not the case, according to testimonies from relatives, who signed a complaint with management, signed by 127 people, before the carnage that Covid caused in the private center.
“The treatment was not humane, not because of the people who worked there, who were underpaid and overworked. » [de trabajo] and they were not able to attend,” said the witness, who focused his criticism on the address of the residence. “These were very vulnerable people who needed care and who were not receiving it,” he added.
Mother María Consuelo V., suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, died on April 14, 2020 from covid-19. The witness regretted having received “very biased” and limited information. “They only said the essentials,” he told the judge. The woman assured that at the residence, “things were not working well due to the lack of manpower.”
The witness recounted a situation illustrating the residential conditions suffered by his father, also a resident and who died in 2019. The man broke his hip after a fall. However, at the residence, he said, they didn’t even realize he had broken his hip. “They had the good idea, if I may say so, of dressing him with his broken hip and sitting him in the living room in the morning. Just by looking at him, I knew something was going on over there,” he said at the trial. .
The group of witnesses in the second session of the trial reflected a residence with a lack of resources and a chaotic situation in the face of the covid-19 pandemic. The relatives of the deceased who testified, all in a distressed tone, recounted the helplessness they felt due to the lack of resources in the residence and the little information they received about the condition of their loved ones. “They were all people, they were not things,” María Cecilia V said.
