Know what happened and if they could have been saved. These are some of the questions that the relatives of eighteen elderly people – fifteen dead and three injured – are seeking to resolve due to the coronavirus in the Domus Vi retirement home in Alcoy. In the same outbreak, 73 of 140 residents died, but not all were brought to justice.
Since this Monday, it is the Court of First Instance and Instruction 3 of the city of Alicante which will determine whether irregularities were committed in the center from March 8 to April 2020, after the outbreak of the pandemic. This is the first civil trial of its type to reach an oral hearing in Spain.
“Justice for the victims. Dignity for residents,” read the banner held up by some of those affected at the court door. During the eight/nine sessions of the trial, which had to be suspended in February for lack of documentation and which should end on October 11, more than thirty people, including witnesses and experts, will appear before the court.
The complaint from 46 relatives of 18 users, filed at the end of 2021, concerned alleged mismanagement of what happened. Those affected, organized in a forum, point to the lack of staff as one of the key factors in everything that happened and criticize the fact that the patients were not transferred to the hospital or that they were been sedated without their consent.
In civil liability, they are claiming a total of more than two million euros from the parent company, Quavitae Servicio Asistenciales, and its insurer. The company has always attributed these deaths to the severity of an unexpected health crisis.
One of the testimonies on the first day of the trial was that of Dr. Manuel Pérez Bosch, head of the home hospitalization unit at the Virgen de los Lirios Hospital in Alcoy. It was he, accompanied by four other doctors and fourteen nurses, who treated the most seriously ill patients since the intervention of the Ministry of Health in the residence on March 12, 2020. Until then, he regretted , no isolation measures had been taken at the hospital. . center.
Pérez Bosch recounted the “hecatomb” they found when they arrived: “There were patients who asked me for water or said to me, ‘Please, get me out of here’.” “We were refused the telephone” to inform our loved ones, he stressed, while emphasizing that in other larger residences, it was possible to contain epidemics without reaching this lethality.
His testimony coincided with that of five other geroculturists, who highlighted the lack of coordination and understaffing at the residence, as well as the impact that the flood of deaths and hearses accessing the facilities had on them.
Archive image of the Domus Vi residence in Alcoy in March 2020
In statements to the media in front of the judicial headquarters, José Luis García, president of the Association of Relatives of the Victims of the Domus Vi Residence of Alcoy and Concentaina, regretted the “silence” of the company and the Generalitat during of these four years: “There was no sort of apology. “They remain convinced that they did the right thing.”
García explained that they agreed to go through the civil route and excluded the criminal route because the lawyers, after meeting with the prosecutor’s office, found it “very difficult” for the case to prosper, because the events fit into a global pandemic. This is what happened in other similar lawsuits filed in Spain. His only goal, he said, is “that what could have been avoided does not happen again.”
The daughter of one of the deceased, Silvia Peris, recalled the “hell” she experienced: “I didn’t even see my father, I didn’t say goodbye to him either, and I didn’t I also don’t know if he’s in the coffin. “I left him on March 8 and haven’t seen him since.” Other victims also alluded to the “many lies” they received. on the health of their loved ones, to the “despair” in the face of the “chaos” and “incommunication” suffered by the victims themselves. 56 of them died in just two weeks.
In 2002, the Generalitat Valenciana granted the administrative concession for the residence located in a former hospital, managed by several companies, for a period of 45 years. The regional government has reserved part of the available places to include them in the public system. Although his return to the public system was announced in November 2020, the Consell de Ximo Puig could not carry it out.
