Ana Hermida's son was nine years old when he was run over by a vehicle in Lanzarote. The events date back to June 1, 2012, when the minor faced a surgical odyssey with more than a dozen operations to alleviate the damage suffered to his leg.
At first, the minor was urgently transferred to the Doctor José Molina Orosa Hospital in Lanzarote, but a medical decision led to his transfer to the Materno Infantil Hospital of Gran Canaria, the reference hospital center for these cases in the province. He remained in the Materno between June 2 and July 19, 2012, as a private patient, as he was referred due to a traffic accident. There he underwent surgery on more than a dozen occasions.
Once discharged, Ana submitted a request to the Canary Islands Health Service to cover her expenses as she had been displaced to Gran Canaria during the month and a half that her son was hospitalized on the capital island. However, they never covered her expenses in Gran Canaria.
The insurance company of the vehicle that ran over the child took care of the hospital expenses in Lanzarote, before and after his stay in the Materno Infantil. However, to Ana's surprise, two years after the accident, the Treasury notified her that she owed 26,231.43 euros to the Canary Islands Health Service for the hospital bill.
In November 2015, Ana Hermida sent a burofax to the insurance company to inform them of the existence of this unpaid bill, and also responded to the Canary Islands Tax Agency. In her letter to the public entity, she stated that "at no time" has she been informed of the existence of this debt and that this amount should be assumed by the insurance company of the vehicle that ran over her son, which had already covered the rest of the expenses.
For its part, the Directorate of Economic Resources of the Canary Islands Health Service responded in February 2016 and defended in a letter that two unsuccessful "notification attempts" were made in June 2012 through Correos. Despite this, the affected party did not receive the communication and was recorded as absent in the distribution. A year later, on May 6, 2013, the requirement was published in the Official Gazette of the Canary Islands. After that, attempts were made to inform on two more occasions in September 2013, but the notifications were not received, so she was not aware that this information was being requested.
Thus, the Canary Islands Health Service rejected the appeal for reconsideration presented by Ana's defense lawyer and argued that "having elapsed the established deadlines" and "not providing the required information", the settlement of the debt was the responsibility of the child's mother. "These are notifications that I did not receive, that no one collected and the deadline had passed," she testifies in statements to La Voz.
After years of suffering seizures in her bank accounts and the freezing of her payroll, on January 24 she received a letter from the Tax Agency revealing that they are going to seize her house in Arrecife, the only property she has and where she lives with her children, who are also a large family. Currently, the debt amounts to 27,794.45 euros, of which 6,267.76 euros are interest.
Problems with legal assistance
The puzzle for this resident of Arrecife did not end there. During the years in which she fought to destroy the trace of that debt, Ana Hermida ended up receiving allegedly fraudulent legal assistance.
Thus, she appeared at a criminal trial against the driver of the vehicle, who was acquitted. The judicial resolution attributed responsibility for the accident to the minor, who was nine years old at the time. However, this citizen argues that she had the right to claim civil liability for the damages that the vehicle caused to the minor, but her defense lawyer did not pursue it.
However, it was not until now, with the notification of the seizure of her home, that she discovered that the lawyer who had been providing her assistance until then allegedly did not have the relevant qualifications nor had he filed the necessary appeals to eradicate this debt. "Two months ago my lawyer was painting a gas station," she says. "At that moment I contacted another lawyer and he told me that all the deadlines had passed. Now they are seizing my house, I only have that property and we are a large family," she continues.
He always told me that administrative processes are very slow, when I warned him that they had seized a payroll from me again," she concludes. "Now my son has sequelae, the insurance did not cover my expenses, they did not compensate him, I have to pay a bill of 27,000 euros and I am going to be left without a house," laments this resident of the capital of Lanzarote.
