Residents ask Arrecife for a municipal protocol for the death of people in chronic loneliness

Unwanted loneliness is a problem that is fully affecting current society, leading people to live completely alone without family and without a safe or welcoming environment. This past Tuesday, emergency services found a 70-year-old man in Arrecife who had been deceased in his home for fifteen days, but whom no one missed until his neighbors suspected he might have died inside due to the bad smell emanating from the home.

Ricardo Tavío, a member of the company that manages the building community where the deceased lived, intervened this Thursday on the program Buenos días, Lanzarote on Radio Lanzarote - Onda Cero to denounce the situation in which the home was left after the body was removed due to the lack of a municipal protocol.

According to what he recounted, after firefighters from the Emergency Consortium, Local Police officers, and funeral home personnel attended, they left the home uncleaned and the door open even though the dirt on the floor was visible from the landing itself. "They left the home without cleaning the focus of putrefaction and unsanitary conditions that was generated by the situation of the corpse," he explained.

"This Wednesday we were making calls to social services and the neighbors are indignant about this situation because in the neighborhoods everyone finds out what is happening," he continued. In this regard, he highlighted the interest in helping from two of the social workers.

Tavío expressed his annoyance at the non-existence of a municipal protocol to act in these types of situations. "We do not understand how a city council like Arrecife's, through some municipal ordinance, does not have an immediate intervention protocol to deal with these types of situations," he criticized.

Although the death may be due to natural causes, he warned that, in case the autopsy could reveal another cause such as a contagious disease, "we would be involved unnecessarily because the normal thing would have been to seal the home because, moreover, there is also the risk that a squatter could access it," he concluded.

According to data from the 2024 Unwanted Loneliness Barometer, 13.5% of Spaniards suffer from chronic loneliness, a situation that particularly affects the elderly and to which mobility and illness problems are added.