The 17-A reveals the obstacles for the psychic victims of terrorism

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Robert Manrique recalls that only one of the victims of the attack against Hipercor in 1987 recognized a permanent disability exclusively due to psychological consequences. "He shouted out of Hipercor and a Red Cross boy who had just arrived attended her. He asked her name and that's why she was listed. If she hadn't asked, that woman would have no right," says Manrique, wounded in the biggest massacre of ETA and advisor to the Unit for Attention and Assessment of Those Affected by Terrorism ( UAVAT ), which emerged after the jihadist attack of August 17 two years ago in La Rambla de Barcelona and Cambrils . The entity, which has assisted 210 people, has collaborated in 208 applications for recognition of victims and other assistance; he estimates that 82% of the requests for psychological assistance he knows have been dismissed.

According to the latest data, the Ministry of Interior - who is responsible for declaring victim status and granting benefits - has dismissed almost half of the more than 400 aid files that have been resolved from 549 related to 17-A. The department of Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska has recognized 96 people as victims of the attacks of two years ago and has accepted less than a third of the demands for health and psychological assistance, 31%.

"It's been the same as in Hipercor. Can we trust the official listings? Should you have a cut in your hand and not in your brain to be recognized? And the man who has a cut, knows what he has to do to claim your rights? It's what we fight with every day, "says Manrique.

"Physical or psychological, they are wounded"

"A physical or psychological injury is, in the end, wounds alike. The difference is that the psychological ones do not bleed. As they do not, they are easier to ignore," says Elisa Micciola , psychologist and coordinator of the UAVAT. The organization has endorsed with medical reports the need to finance psychological assistance to 104 people who, in large part, witnessed the attacks. As a worker at a kiosk of flowers La Rambla, which was thrown inside the store to dodge the van driven by the terrorist Younes Abbouyaaqoub before she flipped .

It is one of the examples that the entity cites on requests that Interior has rejected alleging reasons that Micciola considers that "they do not respond to technical and clinical criteria"; In the case mentioned, the Ministry replies that the applicant was not in the trajectory of the vehicle, according to police reports.

"Many psychological victims saw all the barbarism, the dead and wounded, helped them ... Physically nothing happened to them and it was difficult for them to identify themselves as victims, but when they returned home they revived images, they began not to leave and started a depression or a state post-traumatic, "says the psychologist, who notes that" much of the requests do not prosper because there is an erroneous definition in the law of what is a direct victim. "

"Victims cost money"

"If we process a request for psychological help, it is because a maladaptive affectation is detected," continues Micciola, who points out that the majority of cases suffer from "post-traumatic" symptoms: " Flashbacks , relive the situation, hyper-alert states ... Each type of person develops the pathology in one way or another. There are people who lock themselves up at home, generate apathy behaviors. There are those who have not returned to the center of Barcelona or have stopped working because they did it in La Rambla ", completes Manrique, who He has seen in the situation of reassuring those affected at the gates of the Government Delegation when submitting procedures, anxious to see policemen returning them to the moments after the attack.

The UAVAT believes that economic reasons are hidden behind denials. "The victims cost money," says its president, Sara Bosch . "If your link to the attack is proven, a compensation proposal must be made and, if it is not cured, the pension would be extraordinary." The law of victims of terrorism stipulates compensation of 75,000 to 180,000 euros. In the UAVAT they explain that they have agreed with specialists on rates for those who can afford a treatment, and who does not, refer them to the public or associations. The State has transferred 5.23 million in compensation for 17-A.

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