The fault, so to speak, was a messenger from MRW. That that January 18, 2019, Thursday, icy Thursday, was presented at noon at the Montesalud residence of Las Rozas, with a package under his arm. What happened next should not be imagined, because it was recorded by the local cameras. The biker entered the hall . The door remained unfortunately open. And slowly, almost sweetly, as if unintentionally, Isabel Martínez, who was passing through there but could not be there, crossed the threshold.
He was 85 years old, Alzheimer's and, as he admitted later the residence's own address, tendency to escape. It was 12.38 hours. No one saw her. No one missed her for at least two hours - until 4 pm the Local Police were not notified. "At lunchtime we were notified," says Isabel, her daughter. «They told us: 'Don't be scared, nothing happens. Only we can't find her, we think she has run away. '
Isabel daughter, today in depression, tremblingly tells how she went there, running, from her home in Carabanchel: «She was very old now. I had always imagined that one day they would call me and tell me that he had died. We went to see her almost every day, or my son or my brother or me, but we still feared him almost every day ... ».
Paralyzed, he could not even participate in the search. «My mother was like a daughter to me. I guided her, took care of her, worried about her every second. My son stopped working to take care of her. I blocked He had come out with a little jacket. I could only think I was dead. I kept repeating it . I sat in a chair ».
At nightfall, the Civil Guard stopped the search: «The police continued. Some agents were crying, telling us that we had to report, that it could not stay that way. We went home, not sleeping. I don't wish anyone that hell. I do not wish it to anyone".
At 10.30 the next day, Isabel's mother's body appeared among some brambles . A couple of kilometers from the residence. With wounds on the face. Lifeless, with symptoms of freezing.
«What a horror», says Miguel Vázquez, spokesman for the Platform for the Dignity of Older People in the Residences (Pladigmare), while reciting figures: «The problem is investment, and especially personnel, Spain allows a ratio of 0 , 47 workers per resident, very low. Salaries are very low and the rotation is enormous: workers do not hold much in one place . In France, for example, it is 0.61. In addition, the State has ignored the problem: 73% of the places are private and politicians only want to benefit the private initiative, that the business is good ».
In Spain there are now 8,900,000 people over 65 years old. It is estimated that in 2040 the figure will amount to 14 million. "But everything is narrow," Vázquez abounds. “ The State has the obligation to provide, according to WHO, 5% of places for people over 65. There should be 450,000 places, but there are 370,000 . We must take care of the elderly as if they were, in the end, our children. They have given everything for us ».
Going into the darkness of Alzheimer's, Isabel quickly went "from old to young, because in the end she was like a child," says her daughter. «In fact, we had to incapacitate her when she started with Alzheimer's. The judge, who didn't believe it, asked us to take her there. As soon as he heard her say two sentences, he said: 'This woman is to incapacitate, of course' ».
The director of the residence has admitted to the Police that Isabel had left more than once, that they had already escaped before
With 80 years he began to lose weight, «and began to see and feel things that did not happen. I heard an announcement on TV and thought it was me, that suddenly appeared at home. I felt like a crack in the ceiling opened. Alzheimer's was starting to show. We were all on top of her, my brother, my son and I, but we realized that we couldn't with her. There we were clear that we had to put her in a residence. He refused to bathe, he took it with me, because they get mad at those they love most ... ».
Residence meant money, and there the picture was not straightforward. Isabel daughter, 55, cleans houses for hours. His brother has his mother-in-law also with Alzheimer's. His son, 23, is unemployed. "Luckily, she had a good pension of 1,090 euros, but we couldn't access public help because that was why I had to register at home, and it was a mess to do it."
After incapacitating her, Isabel daughter found the Montesalud residence in Las Rozas. “It seemed like a great place, I liked it. We took her and we were afraid that she would not adapt, that she would be angry with them ... But no, they would tell us that she was very calm, very well, ”he recalls, and reviews episodes of those 10 months that her mother spent at the residence. «It's true that I was calm. I would go down to eat, go up, hang out with friends. Alzheimer was gradually advancing. She told me that she worked in a hotel, because she liked to think that the residence was a hotel. She liked to fold her clothes over and over again ... They let her go around the rooms taking like plastic necklaces they had, and things like that.
There were also trances not so pleasant, narrowness that began to show. “We were going to see her several days a week, and at different times, to see how she really was. I always told them to please comb her hair every day, that she was very conceited and was no longer able to do it herself. Once they had not put on a bra and I said: 'Hey, put the bra on my mother, who has her breasts in her belly, please.' And they go and answer me: 'She doesn't want anyone to see her'. And I answer: 'Man, of course, that's why I bring it here, right?' ». Isabel daughter continues: «I always had the impression that they were just people. Again I arrived and my mother was in her room while everyone else was painting below. 'He doesn't want to go down to paint,' they tell me. But well, if they leave her, she doesn't paint, eat, or anything, of course!
In those months, several times, Isabel mother told her daughter "that she had gone for a walk." «And I said: 'Yes, go, yes'. And now, already dead, the director of the residence has admitted to the Police that she had left more than once, that they had escaped more than once ». This newspaper has contacted Montesalud to know its version, without answer.
The history of Isabel Martínez reminds one of the most unfortunate news of recent months linked to geriatrics: the videos that Francisco Polonio recorded of workers at the Los Nogales residence, in Hortaleza (Madrid), mistreating his mother, 83 years old, apparently for sport. Polonio, whose case is currently being instructed in a Madrid court, qualifies the current situation with undisguised rage: «They are tied to the elderly, they urinate on top, they become infected and they die. That is what you find in the residences. They give them scrap food, park them and if anything they torture them. It is a round business, one of the best there is. They eat garbage, and garbage costs nothing . A few months before the death of my mother, more than 100 relatives of residents complained to the address of dirt and abuse. They didn't do anything. That's why I recorded it.
Polonio continues: «The purpose of the residences is not to care for the elderly, because four workers cannot care for 55 elderly people. If it took me two hours to feed my mother at home, and they take half to feed 55 people, then there you have it: it's impossible. They don't want to take care of them, but even if they wanted, they can't, they aren't enough people.
Montesalud, where Isabel died, counted the day of the events with 19 workers in the afternoon shift for 150 residents . "And surely there they put cooks, gardeners, guards ...", says Miguel Vázquez, of Pladigmare.
They park them and do not do gymnastics. They eat garbage and garbage costs nothing ... It is one of the best businesses out there
We seek the opinion of the other party. Jesús Cubero, general secretary of AESTE, the employer of the residences, speaks the voice of the companies: «The system is completely unsustainable as it is proposed. The public sector costs the square 80 euros if it is managed directly, and it pays us 50 euros if we manage it privately . 50 euros per bed, food, physio , gymnastics. What hostel charges 50 euros just for sleeping? However, we were days in the Ministry of Social Affairs and it seems that they want to remove all of them: they are lacking ». His vision is therefore the opposite: as stated, the care of our elders is impossible from the public and even ruinous for private companies.
The seams of the Welfare State are broken by cracks like this: «As it is today, the system for arranging residences for the elderly is unsustainable. The only solution is that, as in other countries, part of the Health budget is also dedicated to residences, ”says Cubero.
«Actually, the solution is the opposite», insists Miguel Vázquez: «The State must take charge of the protection of the elderly. It benefits private operators by allowing them to lower everything and provide an unfortunate, insufficient benefit » .
Data and percentages that matter very little to Isabel daughter, assisted in her complaint for reckless homicide by lawyer Javier de la Peña, of Lex Abogacía, who has agreed 55,000 euros for the facts «because in the end you cannot go criminally against a worker exploited, which earns 900 euros and also suffers the misery that has caused all this ». De la Peña also comments: «The saddest thing is that there is not even a scale for victims of this type of situation, you have to go to traffic accidents. And, being someone very old, the compensation is very low. 55,000 euros in exchange for a vulnerable and definitely lost old woman.
Isabel daughter, who has not even been able to see the video that accompanies these lines, feels “a horrible, tremendous void: because I was already giving my life to take care of her as she had taken care of me, and because in the residence, after all They didn't even give me an explanation .... We didn't leave them there to die, you know? We were there almost every day, giving him love, holding on to the life he had left.
He can't stop thinking about his mother, and in one particular detail: “He only calmed down when he shook my hand. I was the only person I recognized just by seeing her. I needed to shake hands forever. The detail in particular was discussed by workers of the residence itself: whenever her mother wanted to escape, even 27 kilometers from Las Rozas to Carabanchel, it was to look for her. When Isabel fled from the residence, when she died falling among the brambles, bleeding, at night, and even more at night in her unstoppable Alzheimer's, "it was me, her daughter, who I was looking for."
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