You will agree with me that the loss of a loved one is one of the most painful and traumatic experiences we can go through in life. I also believe that, in these cases, what we all want is to end the consequent mourning as soon as possible.
This reflection should not understand territories but feelings, but, because of what I am going to explain, this does not happen, specifically, in the province of Las Palmas, let me explain.
If someone dies in Lanzarote, La Graciosa or Fuerteventura on a weekend or holiday, including long weekends, it happens that, if the death is judicialized, the relatives or friends of the deceased will have to wait for this circumstance not to occur at the same time in any of the islands that make up the province of Las Palmas. And that? Well, because, if so, they will suffer an unacceptable delay, sometimes of several days, to be able to dispose of their body.
The reason is due to the distribution of autopsy assistant personnel of the Institute of Legal Medicine in the province. It turns out that only two of these professionals attend to a population of more than 1,150,000 people, not counting the tourists who visit us. In addition, we must add to these those people who arrive in our territory as a consequence of the historical fact of immigration. In the end, in case of death, the corresponding autopsy can only be performed with the participation of one of those two.
I am writing this article having let a few days pass after what happened this past holiday weekend in the non-capital eastern islands, where five deaths occurred in that period of time, two in Fuerteventura and three in Lanzarote, which were judicialized. This phenomenon has gone from exceptional to habitual, unfortunately.
Until 2007, we did not have such a professional in Lanzarote from Monday to Friday, but in Fuerteventura not even that to alleviate this effect of increased pain. The truth is that it is not acceptable that the services of these professionals are not extended to weekends and holidays to avoid these situations that break the hearts of families and friends. Especially if we take into account that we have a budget of more than 9,000 million euros.
It should not and cannot continue to be allowed to happen again, because people will continue to die on Saturdays, Sundays, holidays and some of those deaths will be judicialized. It is not desirable that in Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and La Graciosa we have to continue depending on the autopsy assistant who has to travel from Gran Canaria not having other cases on that island, or on some other at the same time. Or that you have the security of getting round trip tickets that guarantee the provision of the service. Incomprehensibly, our suffering in the face of the death of a loved one depends on whether or not this is increased.
It is true that, sometimes, we only react when we suffer certain events in our own flesh; I hope this is not the case. What I claim as an ordinary citizen of my island is simple, to have a service that, apart from responding to a legal obligation, above all obeys a strict and necessary question of humanity without economic or territorial functionality visions being able to stand in the way of this, which serve as support for facts that should not be repeated even once more.