His name is Manuel Pérez Luis, he is 75 years old, he started with a slight fever 20 days ago and his family has been looking for his body for a week for the morgues in Madrid, without success at the moment . "How are we? Well, with the pain that your father dies, but multiplied by a thousand, because it is not that you cannot approach the corpse due to this virus, it is that you cannot even cry because they have lost it, they do not know where is he, "says his son Luis Antonio to EL MUNDO.
Neither in Santa Lucía , with whom the dead had contracted death insurance, nor in the mortuaries of Parla, Torrejón and Móstoles can they tell the family where the body may be , in a Madrid overflowing with corpses due to the unbearable mortality of the Covid -19. "We have no other way than to publicly denounce it, because otherwise no one will listen to us," says Luis Antonio. "It is incredible that in the 21st century we are like this."
Manuel passed away last Monday in La Paz. "They called us to inform us of his death at 11 in the morning," begins his story. " My sister then talks to Santa Lucía Decesos, and communicates it . In the middle of the afternoon I go to La Paz to look for his belongings, I ask them to see him and they say no. Santa Lucía calls us and refers him to another insurer of his called Albia . A paperworker contacts us and tells us that they are calling us, but it shows that the situation is getting over them. "
"They already tell us that the cremation will take five to seven days, that we have patience. Okay, so patience. That same Monday we spoke with the processor at twelve o'clock at night. He tells us that surely in the morning they will take the body to the Parla or Móstoles funeral homes. Okay. On Tuesday, they call us from Albia and ask us for patience again. They admit that they don't know where the body is . On Wednesday we call the funeral homes and tell us that they don't know anything, that when they find out They call us. There we already know that they have lost the body. "
"These people have lost the body"
Manuel Pérez's family begins to get impatient and jumps to social networks, with a copy to Santa Lucía. "The tramitador calls us to calm down, but we go to bed with the same feeling: our father has just died and these people have lost their bodies."
Last Thursday a sister of Luis Antonio wrote again to Saint Lucia: "We are devastated. I beg you to tell us something please," he writes, in a message forwarded now to EL MUNDO. "The processor responds literally: 'The same thing happens to me. I have been calling since five in the morning and I have not been able to locate him. When they call them from the funeral home, demand that they tell them where he is. I send them phone numbers for funeral homes.' Can they answer that? If they are the ones who have to know! "says Luis Antonio.
On Friday, the family, "desperate", "we call the funeral homes again, and nothing, neither in Móstoles, nor in Parla, nor in Torrejón know how to say anything to us. Then, we call La Paz again, and there they tell us maybe they have taken him to the Ice Palace morgue ... And we are now in those, trying to see if he is there after a week looking for him, "he concludes.
The family is consulting with the Lex Abogacía law firm, which has set up a platform for those affected by the coronavirus, to report the events and claim their rights. Javier de la Peña , lawyer at the firm, stresses that the case is not unique: "Dramatic situations are coming to us that have as a common denominator a lack of means, coordination and enormous foresight. It cannot be that at the end of March we are with a flagrant test deficit, without masks for the most vulnerable groups or without respirators . There are hospitals that do not have an ICU and have not referred patients to these units in other Autonomous Communities due to a very serious lack of coordination. The obligation of means is clearly being breached of the health administrations and this affects the patients, the health personnel and other highly unprotected groups ".
Manuel Pérez, says his family, began to feel fever on Friday, March 6, and was referred to La Paz on Monday, 9. That same day, he was already isolated. "We went to see him that afternoon and he asked us to stand at a window in the hallway so we could kiss each other . It was the last time I saw him," says his son.
That week, until Friday the 14th, his family can talk to him. "From there, no longer. The doctors called me every day to tell me how it was getting worse. In the end, already sedated, on dialysis ... He died on Monday the 23rd, and death is hard for you to accept, but on top of that they lose him. .. It's unbearable, "he ends.
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