In something, without a doubt, Mercedes Milá's program was wrong. The "Autumn Sun" residence is not at all "clandestine", as stated in the report broadcast last Monday on Cuatro. However, and despite the fact that everything ...
In something, without a doubt, Mercedes Milá's program was wrong. The "Autumn Sun" residence is not at all "clandestine", as stated in the report broadcast last Monday on Cuatro. However, and despite the fact that everyone knew of its existence, it has been allowed to remain open for years, even though it did not even have a license.
What's more, it has now become public that the residence has a firm judicial order for closure since November 2011 and the Tías City Council ordered its sealing after the broadcast of the report, but the vast majority of the elderly continue there; in an illegal residence, which is also being investigated for the treatment the elderly received.
The Canary Islands Government itself sent the program's images to the Prosecutor's Office, which has opened proceedings because there could be indications of a crime. However, until noon this Thursday, 25 elderly people remained in that residence. Why? The answer is as simple as it is shameful: in Lanzarote there are no places to accommodate them.
Only for that reason, and regardless of the exaggerations or even the sensationalism of some assessments, Mercedes Milá's program has put its finger on one of Lanzarote's great sores. An island where institutions have squandered money for years, while abandoning vital issues, did not have a single public residence until "four days" ago. And although it finally has them now, its places are still more than insufficient to meet the existing needs.
Perhaps under the protection of that, a center has been allowed to operate illegally for years. Or perhaps it is that in Lanzarote illegality no longer causes enough scandal, considering what some have been allowed and are allowed to do. However, for most mortals, it would be unthinkable to open any type of business (let alone one dedicated to the care of the sick, elderly or children) without having all the papers in order. And that, no matter how much some have bastardized it on this island, is not a whim.
The licenses, the activity permits, the "little papers" that the director of the residence says he was missing, are what guarantee compliance with the law. Those that allow, in this case, to give confidence to the families who leave their loved ones there. And it is that no matter how private a residence is, it is the administration that must ensure that it meets minimum conditions to care for those people.
Curiously, while the report generated a wave of indignation on the island, those who have most defended the residence are many relatives of the elderly who are admitted there. Some have filed complaints and a few have come out to criticize the residence, especially for what they saw in that report, but the vast majority of those who have appeared publicly have been to justify it and even to ask that the closure not be carried out.
They assure that their relatives were well cared for, that they never saw anything strange in the residence and even that the images have been "manipulated". And they may be right that there are some exaggerations in the report (especially in the comments of the presenter herself), but the hidden camera videos show what they show. And that is not what the relatives see when they visit, at a previously established time. And they also do not have to know if the amount of staff is sufficient, and that established by law, or if, for example, the medication is administered by qualified personnel for it (that is, a doctor or a nurse). For all that, the administration had to watch over, and it did not.
That an elderly man appears in the report, we do not know if perhaps with Alzheimer's or some type of senile dementia, shouting "I want to leave" or "get me out of here", however heartbreaking it may be, does not mean that he is being mistreated. But the hidden camera does show other undeniable things. For example, how an assistant tells a trainee (reporter of these events) to administer a sedative to several elderly people (in one case she even makes it clear that she does not know how many drops, and first tells him five and then ten). And it also shows how an elderly man vomits and then loses consciousness and, despite the fact that the director himself is heard saying that he may have suffered a "pre-infarction" or a "small thrombosis", he resists calling a doctor.
To that we must add how they feed some with syringes, despite the fact that they stopped being used years ago (according to the report, they also use the same one for several, as well as toothbrushes) and how many are tied with ropes that would not even be used to tie a dog (in the extreme cases in which this measure is necessary with some elderly people, it must be under medical authorization and with approved material to avoid causing them damage).
And a separate mention deserves the issue of the alleged "jokes". And it is that no matter how much one wants to analyze the tone with which they were pronounced, one must have a very particular sense of humor to see the grace in phrases such as: "What a shitter the aunt is! Look what you threw up, damn? Look! Dirty. Disgusting"; "he likes to stink"; or "it seems that this man has eaten a dead dog". And that is seen and heard in the hidden camera videos. The director's response? "Here we joke a lot with the grandparents". Simply, unacceptable.
Now, the Justice has opened proceedings and will be the one who has to investigate whether or not there are crimes behind these events. But in the meantime, every day, every minute that those elderly people continue in that illegal residence, should make us die of shame as a society.
