The recent reopening of the senior center, located in the town of San Bartolomé, represents an important step forward in the care of our seniors in these times. We must prioritize the maintenance of the physical and cognitive capacities of this segment of the population since, once again, we have been able to see an alarming deficit of socio-health spaces that allow us to close the integral cycle in the care of these people.
The current regional government says it is willing to change this reality with respect to the course followed by its predecessors (based on the data); in principle, they have begun to provide a larger financial sheet and an action plan that we have all received with cautious joy.
Aware of this situation, in our municipality we had planned an ambitious project that would have allowed us, with the support of other administrations, to recover lost time and provide our population with those places and services that it intolerably lacks.
However, the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic forces us to reprogram and resize that ambitious project and adapt to the budgetary limitations to which we are going to be subjected.
But, despite this unforeseeable situation, our commitment to the elderly and dependents will continue to be the fundamental axis of this mandate, because we owe it to them and, moreover and precisely, because of the very hard lesson that the COVID-19 pandemic has entailed.
Obviously, nothing can compete with the harshness of the figures of elderly people who have died in residences, but without losing sight of the damage caused to those other people who, although fortunately have not suffered the disease, have suffered its consequences.
All specialists warn us about the cognitive deterioration that our elders are experiencing as a result of confinement, deprived of their outings, of the little moments of sunshine, of the chat in the street and, above all, of visits from children and grandchildren.
One of the urgent tasks that awaits us, as soon as we can do it safely, will be that: to approach them to help them break that isolation, to propose activities that prevent them from continuing to diminish their capacities as a result of a situation for which it was impossible to prepare.
I insist on that idea. It was impossible to be prepared for the real disaster that came upon us. However, we can and must train ourselves to combat the dramatic consequences that the coronavirus has caused.
That is why we have prioritized works as necessary as the San Bartolomé Senior Center, the Family Respite Center or the implementation of plans that allow us to guarantee the well-being of our seniors.
We are going to be able to do it because we were already working on it. As an example, the Plan against unwanted loneliness: if when we started working on this initiative we considered it as a priority, today it seems absolutely urgent.
We are going to do it for our elders, because they need it, because they deserve it. But we are going to do it, also, because there is a whole economy of care that we have ignored for too many years.
Providing well-being to the elderly and dependents also means generating opportunities for our young people, for their granddaughters and grandsons. An important part of the investment we make in protecting those who need it most will return in the form of new job opportunities.
That is why I speak of investment, refusing to see the care of our neighbors as an expense. I try to start a path in favor of those who have given a lot to get ahead, projecting all their efforts in bringing us closer to the models developed in the most advanced countries and with extensive experience, where investing in the care economy has led to large doses of the welfare state.
That is our challenge!
