Encarnación Burgueño has not yet come forward to explain the "bug operation", the failed plan to bring doctors to the nursing homes in Madrid during the weeks of hospital stoppage.
That silence should end today.
Burgueño is summoned at 9.45 in the Madrid Assembly where she will answer the questions of the deputies investigating the alleged denial of assistance to the elderly by the Government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
Burgueño, the daughter of an influential adviser to the president, drew up a chaotic plan, which took place during the 12 days of spring in which around 3,000 elderly people died in nursing homes in the region.
EL PAÍS unveiled the details of that plan in June and today broadcasts four audios of Burgueño to which it has had access.
They can be listened one by one further down in this text or all together in the video that accompanies the piece.
They show that it was directed by a high official of the Community and that its attempt to help was insufficient.
The voicemails also reveal how in the midst of the shipwreck she was thinking about business.
The 12 days of the "bug operation": the fiasco of the Madrid plan for residences
Ayuso's health advisor: "The elderly in nursing homes were left to their own devices"
"I flipo colorines", he says in one of the audios.
"We are going to become the kings and masters of the social health management of Madrid, Autonomous Community."
Neither the president of the Community nor her Minister of Health, Enrique Ruiz Escudero, have explained this operation.
When the first case of massive deaths from coronavirus was known in a residence, on March 17 in Montehermoso, President Ayuso assured in an interview on Telecinco that it was an isolated event and that the residences were medicalized.
It is denied by all the evidence, including an Amnesty International report, and testimonies from directors of residences and the senior official who was in charge of this medicalization.
Encarnación Burgueño, 50, had no experience with residencies or medical training (she was dedicated to renting defibrillators), but she did have connections.
His father, Antonio Burgueño, was director of Hospitals during the Esperanza Aguirre era.
The current president called him on Tuesday, March 10, to ask for his advice because the hospitals were filling up.
The next day Antonio Burgueño met Ayuso at Puerta del Sol;
his chief of staff, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez;
and the councilors of Health, Enrique Ruíz Escudero and of Finance, Javier Fernández-Lasquetty.
Within 24 hours the advisor gave them a plan that included sending doctors to nursing homes.
The objective was to attend to them in situ so that they did not collapse the hospitals.
The idea was not implemented and a vast majority of nursing home elderly, the population most vulnerable to the coronavirus, were trapped without external help.
The advisor's daughter appears on the scene on Wednesday, March 25, a day before Ayuso activated a crash plan to save the residences.
The Minister of Health was going to lead the crisis in nursing homes, relegating the uncomfortable Alberto Reyero, the Minister of Social Policies who warned of unworthy deaths within those centers.
The night before Ayuso's announcement, Encarnación Burgueño sent an audio to her partner in the defibrillator business, Israel Jara, and to the manager of a small ambulance company, Eduardo Aragonés.
He includes the latter in his plan because he had the necessary vehicles and a small staff of toilets.
Burgueño has been given the green light by Carlos Mur de Víu, the general director of social and health coordination.
He is a psychiatrist who, since 2019, has held that position of the Health Department, whose tasks include medical care in residences.
"Hey, let's see in a couple of hours, well, less, he's going to call me thisee ... Carlos Mur because I've sent him an email saying we need the PPE, we need the tests and we need to know where to go, at least to go entering, then if we have to go now, evaluating and others ”.
Minutes later Burgueño sends a second audio with Mur de Víu's instructions for the following morning.
“Let's see, operation bug to speak.
Mr. Carlos Mur just called me.
You have to send me the PPE you need, okay?
With a margin of two or three more per team, okay?
The PPEs that are needed to tell him where we have to go for them first thing in the morning.
Voucher?
And tomorrow morning he tells us.
He told me that there are 10 homes that are bad and about 30 that are bad.
That is, tomorrow if we would start in the early afternoon or as soon as we have everything organized.
You have everything organized.
Voucher?
If not, we start doing X-rays, nothing happens.
Voucher?
But at least go give them a cable and see how you can organize it yourself so that later you can make a study of demands and send what each residence needs.
Voucher?
We have a volunteer radiologist.
To… throw us a cable.
Retired radiologist.
Important, send me (sic) the EPIs by email, not by WhatsApp.
Email.
So that he is on the record and can send it to whom it may concern.
Worth?
Come on bye ”.
Aragonés does not know Burgueño in person.
It is the partner Jara who connects them.
He says that he embarks on Burgueño's project out of a sense of duty and because it gives him guarantees.
He sends you by email a PDF with a paid contract signed by Carlos Mur de Víu.
This newspaper has seen that document.
He assigns his ambulance company, Transamed, "the comprehensive management of the Covid-19 crisis in the social health centers of the Community of Madrid".
He is 43 years old and passionate about emergencies. As a teenager he enrolled as a volunteer in the Red Cross.
A few years ago he asked for a loan to buy ambulances and set up his own business.
Transamed is maintained thanks to sporting events and shows where the presence of ambulances is necessary.
This activity completely stopped with the state of alarm and the contract to medicalize the residences was a lifeline.
The first morning Burgueño tells Aragonés that the PPE collection point is the Ifema field hospital.
Aragonés and his health workers move on orders from Burgueño, and she receives directives from Mur de Víu.
The Transamed owner can never speak to the politician.
Burgueño does not want to.
Aragonés feels that this chain slows down the toilets but accepts it.
He thinks that this intermediation is unnecessary, but at least he sees that Burgueño is capable of opening doors.
Every time the residences prevent the entry of their toilets, he warns Burgueño.
Minutes later the residence lets them enter.
Aragonés has doctors and nurses under his command.
In total, there are 15. There is little they can do.
Madrid has 473 residences with more than 50,000 elderly people in March.
The Transamed team sometimes crosses paths with the military from the UME or with firefighters, but not with doctors outside the residences.
They see the elderly die asphyxiated, without the support of oxygen therapy, intravenous medication or morphine.
From his home, Burgueño guides and encourages them.
His main interest is to pass information to Mur de Víu with the status of each center.
On Saturday, April 4, send a congratulatory message to the WhatsApp group.
“Ahem, we have around 8,600, I would already put with those that I am missing about 8,700 grandmothers seen.
Do you know what that is? Do you know the job you have done?
Is incredible.
I mean, incredible.
In a week and a little.
One week.
Because we started on Friday of the week before.
In a week.
I flipo colorful, guys.
Flipo Colorines of what you are worth.
Fuck as we continue like this, we are going to become the kings and masters of the social health management of Madrid, Autonomous Community, okay?
Flipo.
You are awesome.
You are going to make my dream come true.
What is working in the socio-sanitary world.
To have my own company.
Thank you.
Many thanks".
But the joy was short-lived.
On Monday, April 6 at 3:01 p.m. EL PAÍS reveals that Encarnación Burgueño was in charge of the medicalization of the residences.
Minutes later, she orders the ambulances not to visit any more residences.
“Listen (sic), don't go anywhere this afternoon Eduardo, okay?
I'll call you now".
Burgueño didn't call for two days.
He is a totally different person.
He makes excuses.
He tells you that they were volunteers and that he cannot pay them.
On April 14 Burgueño contacted Aragonés again to tell him that Mur de Víu wanted to pay them, but was waiting for an appropriate time and manner.
“The fire has burned but it has not burned that much.
Mur is defending himself, ”he explains.
His father, he told him, was going to mediate to get payment.
“He (Mur de Víu) is going to leave after this crisis but first he wants to pay us this.
My father talks to him, ”he adds.
“The fire has burned but it has not burned that much.
Mur is defending himself "
Encarnación Burgueño in a message of April 14
EL PAÍS spoke with Aragonés in June.
He said that he is ruined by that and other debts that he had not collected.
He had his contract with the Community of Madrid and was preparing to claim payment through the courts.
Transamed survives on small private business services like shooting galleries or a TV show, but he's desperate.
You need the return of the big events.
Burgueño has not spoken with this newspaper, but her father has defended her, saying that he gave minimal help considering the extreme need in the residences.
According to her version, her daughter is a daring one who without her knowledge contacted the Community to offer her help.
Mur de Víu confessed to this newspaper in June that there was no significant medical presence in the residences before April 6.
On May 13 he was fired.
Ayuso said in a complimentary tweet that he was renewing the counseling and was counting on him, but the truth is that Mur de Víu has been working in a private health center in Barcelona since October, according to his LinkedIn.
He is one of the witnesses proposed by the parties to appear before the Assembly commission that investigates the management of the tragedy.
During the spring wave, almost 6,000 older people died with covid-19 in Madrid residences.
This data does not include those who died in hospitals with covid-19, a figure that the Community has not revealed.
In total, 11,555 people who lived in residences in Madrid died from any cause.
In other words, one in five elderly people who lived in these homes lost their lives in March, the scene of many unworthy deaths.
Ayuso, on March 17: "[The residences] are practically all medicalized" ATLAS
Ayuso, March 17: "[The residences] are practically all medicalized"
This is the transcript of an interview that Ayuso gave to Telecinco's nightly newscasts on March 17, hours after the alarms went off after it was learned that a coronavirus outbreak had caused numerous deaths at the Montehermoso residence in Madrid.
-The news of that nursing home has shocked us a lot.
I don't know if you could give us any more information.
If you have more information about this outbreak you have suffered, you are suffering.
-Yes.
This information has reached us throughout the afternoon of this residence.
The truth is that within the entire healthcare network that we have in the Community of Madrid, practically all of them are medicalized and we did not know that they were in this situation.
They have informed us that there are indeed 17 deceased right now.
There are 15 who were deceased and six who are already in one or two hospitals in the Community of Madrid.
But come on eeeh, what I want to convey is that it is not the general trend, much less in our residences.
-And what measures can be taken in this case? What are they going to do?
-Yes, no, in fact, those that are eeehm public directly depend on the Community of Madrid and already are, as well as the private ones that have been arranged, such as this case, which have communicated it to us and what we have done has been transfer medical teams to all of them and protect the elderly greatly because as we are saying every day it is the most vulnerable population.
Do you know of cases of discrimination or irregularities in a residence in the Community of Madrid?
Contact the Madrid section reporter
fpeinado@elpais.es
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a message on Twitter to @FernandoPeinado
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