He was 42 years old and had been hooked on horse for many years. He died using drugs. The corpse that appeared two weeks ago in a house in the Cuatro Esquinas area belonged to Ramiro C.P., a drug addict of Galician origin who lived on the streets of Arrecife and had tried to get out of the drug hole, even managing to "be clean", even if only for a few days. But the devil dressed as heroin, pills or whatever was at hand, had tripped him up until he fell definitively into an abandoned house that had been turned into a "smoking den" by him and other homeless people, on Gran Canaria street in Arrecife.
He died of cardiorespiratory arrest last Thursday, November 15, caused by a drug overdose, according to the autopsy. Due to the mixture of several substances, those who knew him point out. "He died because he mixed heroin, pills from the treatment he was receiving, alcohol and tranquilizers," says Aníbal David, a 35-year-old drug addict who usually resides in La Rocar. "He boasted that he hadn't used heroin for 13 days," says a friend of Ramiro's, with whom he had occasionally shared occupied houses. "I think he wanted to give himself a `treat´ and take a quarter of heroin or whatever, and after so many days without using and with the treatment, well... it's like if I take a quarter now: I'll die."
In the Cuatro Esquinas and Charco de San Ginés area, almost everyone knew him. Along with other companions who are in the same situation, Ramiro C.P. could be seen near the Calor y Café center in Arrecife, where they are offered food. There, while waiting for the hot meal, his acquaintances remember his last days. The only woman in the group doesn't understand what could have gone through his head to "take" that explosive mixture. "He knew that if he took that he would die, I don't know, he got up well in the morning, but then his wires would cross," says the girl, who recalls with a half-smile that Ramiro "was my suitor, well, that's what he said."
The one who was occasionally his companion in occupied houses is convinced that the effects of alcohol and pills made him "lose his head" and go back to looking for horse. "He is a victim who didn't deserve this. He was strong, valid, intelligent." He says that the nine years in prison that "he had eaten in his youth" marked him, that he still had several pending legal cases and that now he had the hope of entering the Zonzamas Therapeutic Community.
Ramiro C.P. was a known patient at the Drug Dependence Care Center located on García Escámez street in Arrecife, where they had his medical history and where they confirm that he was trying to enter Zonzamas. At the moment when any patient undergoes the treatment administered by the CAD doctors coordinated by Dr. Rosa Torres, the first thing they are told is that "if they are taking drugs and mix it with the treatment, they run the risk of having a cardiorespiratory arrest," explains the doctor, "I'm tired of repeating it to people."
In the heat of the smoke of freshly rolled grass, a "street person" as he defines himself, recalls that Ramiro "lately was a little worse than before", that he was frequently "high".
"He was quite hooked, but he was a smart guy." The voices mix, the memories they have of Ramiro among eight and ten people who frequented the same places as Ramiro, lived in the same abandoned houses and warehouses in which he had lived, and continue on the streets of Arrecife, in the parking lots of the capital, in search of the hot meal some, of the dose that allows them to spend the day others.
Other lives
In the heart of the capital and between houses, some stately, is what looks more like a landfill than a refuge to go throwing. There, among rubble, garbage of all kinds and used syringes, dozens of drug addicts spend the night or go to "shoot up" every day. And there Ramiro C.P. died. No neighbor of Gran Canaria street remembers his face, which is confused with that of those who walk along the road almost without walking, with short, fast, automaton steps. "At least 40 or 50 pass there every day, all day coming and going," explains the neighbor across the street.
Precisely a few hours before Ramiro's death, a team from the Department of Social Affairs had passed by that abandoned house. According to councilor Emilia Perdomo, about fifteen homeless people were staying in the house. "We were offering them different kinds of help," says the councilor, who puts the number of homeless people at almost 200, among whom there are many drug addicts, who live in about twenty abandoned houses in the capital. With the arrival of winter the number increases, "I suppose because the climate is better here and they are well cared for," says Emilia Perdomo.
"We offer them to look for their families, to contact the social services of their municipalities of origin and if none of them take charge, we offer them the possibility of going to several shelters for homeless people in Las Palmas or in the Peninsula, in addition to the option of undergoing treatment to get cured." But Emilia Perdomo says that many never go through the Social Services area.
The girl for whom Ramiro was sighing lately, according to her, assures that the family of Ramiro C.P., who came from Galicia, has already taken charge of his mortal remains. Meanwhile, life goes on in Arrecife, although some are afraid. Like Aníbal David, who does not hide that every day he goes to bed and gets up thinking about whether he will live another day. The group dissolves. It's time to put something in your stomach, but there is still one more memory for Ramiro, that of the friend with whom he had shared a house on occasion and who, the Sunday before his death, had given him the novel "The Perfume". "I had found it in the trash among others and gave it to him. He talked a lot about that book."
