A total of 16 professionals in the field of artistic gymnastics from the elite training center in Palma (Centre de Tecnificació Esportiva de les Illes Balears, CTEIB) have accused Pedro Mir Homar of systematic abuse of power and threatening the health of minors, technical director and coach of the center, and also of the Xelska club in Mallorca, one of the most prestigious in Spain.
In this technical training center, where athletes are prepared to make the jump to national teams and the demand is maximum, Mir was accused en bloc in 2022 by four doctors and five physiotherapists of the entity, who reported to the Department of Social Affairs and Sports of the Balearic Government their behavior with the gymnasts - minors, for the most part, when they were in the center - for years, at least since 2013. Three other professionals from the socio-educational field who had interviewed 371 people, including athletes, families and center staff, as part of an abuse detection plan in 2021, also notified management of situations of abuse of power and psychological abuse.
In addition, they expressed their concern, verbally, about “structural and systemic violence.”
The people who accuse Mir, a well-known coach in this sport, rise to 16 with four testimonies from former gymnasts collected by EL PAÍS.
The department, responsible for the CTEIB, put the case in the hands of the Juvenile Prosecutor's Office, which filed it in May 2022, considering that what was reported was not classified as a crime, although it urged the Balearic Government to study administrative disciplinary measures.
However, they were rejected.
Pedro Mir Homar continues in his position.
The report signed in January 2022 by these nine professionals, employed at the center since 2003 and at different times, is forceful: “Pedro Mir Homar has systematically abused power and has systematically attacked the health of athletes, ignoring many of occasions at the discretion of the health professionals of the medical center, violating the rights of said athletes as patients.”
He also adds that since 2013, those responsible for the center and even two general directors of sports of the Balearic Government were informed of these practices without them doing anything.
They remember in that writing that already in 2020, in a meeting of the medical staff with the manager of the CTEIB, he told them “verbally” that the entity “would look for a lawyer to refer the case to the Juvenile Prosecutor's Office because it was considered child abuse. continued".
In the extensive dossier of more than 500 pages that was delivered to the Minors prosecutor - and to which this newspaper has now had access - with statements, internal documentation and emails, they accuse Mir of forcing injured gymnasts to train and compete, and imposing their criteria on that of health personnel to try to shorten medical leaves or directly not respecting them.
Pedro Mir Homar, on February 7, during the presentation of the Iberdrola Women's Gymnastics League in Palma.
Palma City Council
The gymnasts have told this newspaper “abuse of power”, “constant physical and psychological abuse” and “six-month absences after major surgeries that turned into two and a half.”
“Normalized crushing,” they repeat, and more towards the gymnasts who had a tendency to gain weight.
“Fatties,” they say was heard over and over again in the room.
“Her ass is turning like your mother's,” says another who points out that she saw a girl put her fingers in her mouth to make herself vomit and expel the food.
“They rewarded you if you lost weight,” she adds.
One who belonged to another club, but who trained every morning with Mir's elite group, corroborates the accusations: “We gymnasts ate separately from all the athletes, Pedro accompanied us because he had to measure our food.
We have all normalized that, the slaps, the 'fat girl', 'what an ass you have', it was normal."
All the gymnasts consulted for this report asked not to be identified out of fear;
some even refuse to speak even anonymously.
Two people say they saw Mir slap two gymnasts.
“Hence the fear, because the girls saw him, everyone saw him, that's why everyone is afraid of him getting angry.
I dreamed about him, that I beat him to death from the rage he generated in me.
Anyone who has been in there and says they haven't seen it is lying.
Everyone looks and remains silent.
Out of fear,” says one of the gymnasts who testified before the Prosecutor's Office.
The chronology of the case is as follows: in 2020 the center promotes the abuse detection plan, in which three professionals from the socio-educational field carry out a report;
They deliver the report (which talks about abuse of power and mistreatment) on January 10, 2022;
Based on the information collected in the report, on January 11, 2022, the managers ask one of the doctors for a report to detail the scope of the complaints collected.
He delivers the report to management, signed by three other doctors and five physiotherapists.
On February 16, 2022, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Sports sends the documentation to the Juvenile Prosecutor, who in May 2022 decides to archive it.
Mir denies the accusations: “The high level is very demanding”
Pedro Mir denies all the accusations.
“The sport of gymnastics at a high level is very demanding and there can always be little things, interpretations... But what is happening here does not fall within the things they are looking for abuse.
What there has been is a complaint, if you want to call it that, rather it is a report issued by a doctor seeking the signature of other professionals that has gone nowhere because I had no support, it did not clearly define what I was doing.
"I think that a doctor, encouraged by the physiotherapists, wanted to throw shit at me and it fell on him," he defends himself.
In reality, what there is is a collective complaint and a report, which the manager requests from the doctor.
“He asks Me by mail, as the person responsible for the medical service, to issue it.
I think it has even more strength if everyone's signatures are there and the document was agreed upon and prepared by everyone," explains the aforementioned doctor.
Mir assures that in his 40 years as a coach he has always been careful.
“No gymnast, neither minor nor adult, has denounced me.
Neither does any father.
I have always greatly respected my gymnasts, I have never used bad words, nor have I called them fat or fat asses.
“I have not given any slaps as some say, nor slaps,” he says.
He also states that none of his gymnasts have competed or trained injured: “I have never forced a gymnast to compete if she was injured, injured or on sick leave, it is already unthinkable because there is my salary and my children's bread and it is not worth it.
The athlete has always started a competition with a medical clearance, sure, it is different that the medical clearance was not from the doctor at the training center, but no one was obligated to me and management was informed.”
Among the accusations, precisely, is that of obtaining discharges from external doctors, against the criteria of the center's specialists.
The Juvenile prosecutor who handled the case was José Díaz Cappa, who listened as a witness to the center's medical officer and also to gymnasts of both sexes and coaches.
In conversation with this newspaper, he explains: “It was not possible to verify the existence of sufficient evidence and evidence to consider that what was reported existed as a crime.”
And he adds: "For this reason I referred the department to the Balearic Islands Sports Law 14/2006, which establishes a series of disciplinary-administrative issues so that, from the Administration, the assessment of these measures and if applicable, apply them.”
This law indicates among serious infractions "the carrying out of activities and the provision of services related to sports in conditions that may seriously affect the health and safety of people", with fines of 6,000 to 60,000 euros, suspension of the activity for a period of one to four years and disqualification.
But the council did not see anything punishable.
“I have seen many cases like these in sport, it is a legal vacuum in which there is violent behavior that ruins lives, but it is not a crime, and nothing is done, because it has always been like this,” says an expert in protection against crimes. abuses in sports, with more than 15 years of experience.
The Minister of Social Affairs and Sports at that time was Fina Santiago, who assures that what happened was “a problem between the medical staff and the coach.”
And she adds: “They got along terribly and had different criteria.
They sent us the complaints to counseling, we invited the doctor to report it to the Prosecutor's Office, but he didn't want to, so we did it.”
When it is pointed out to her that he was not only a doctor, but three more, in addition to five physiotherapists, she says: ”Some then went back on their words.
What surprised us most is that the medical officer told us that these practices had been carried out since 2012 and never reported this in writing before 2021. I think the two had a personal dispute that they took to the extreme.”
Of the nine signatories of the initial report, eight responded to the requests of Santiago herself, who requested details in writing and officially of the reported cases.
When asked about those internal or administrative measures that the Juvenile Prosecutor suggested, Santiago responds: “There was no sanction because there was no reason for there to be one.
The complainants claimed that Mir Homar made the gymnasts return to training and competitions earlier than planned due to the surgeries.
But the parents signed the authorizations for the surgeries and also the rehabilitation plans.
None of the gymnasts he spoke to considered that they were being forced or demanded excessively.”
And he adds: “We consulted with the legal services and they told us that, normally, when a complaint is sent and it is resolved that there is no criminal offense, they always use the tagline that the criminal does not exclude the administrative.
But, in this case, no file was opened in that sense because the legal services considered that there was no breach of the employment contract (...) Pedro Mir Homar did not operate on anyone, the operations were performed by external doctors with the consent of the parents.
There was no place to go administratively.”
Regarding the prosecutor's investigation, Pedro Mir explains: “They called 14 of my gymnasts to testify.
I told the prosecutor: Don't you think it's a bit harsh that I'm asking my gymnasts if I've mistreated them, insulted them, or if I've paid some of them to testify on my behalf?
What he concluded is that simply, if anything, there had always been a divergence between the medical diagnosis and a lack of protocol in the use of external services.”
“The typical phrase was 'you have to jump through hoops'.”
One of the gymnasts consulted, who was not directly trained by Pedro Mir, but who shared a training room with the girls and traveled with the coach to an international competition, says that they were two weeks to forget due to the insults he said to him: “ When I came back I had lost my desire to do gymnastics.
I was 15 years old.
The technicians justify these behaviors with the fact that high-performance sport is like that.
The typical phrase was: 'you have to jump through hoops'.
You couldn't debate, or ask.
It's done like this and that's it.
When you are young and don't have the mechanisms to defend yourself, you are at their mercy.
That man was very manipulative, with the gymnasts and with his parents.
The most frustrating thing is that he had everyone's approval.”
This gymnast, who asks not to be identified, ended up leaving the sport.
There are others who defend Mir, although one of those who accuse him says: “The majority will say that it was a family and Pedro was a kind of father and that everything was beautiful.
I'm not going to say it was a cult, but something similar.
He messed with the girls and the parents.
He forbade us to form relationships with the gymnasts.
The level of pressure was such that even when you decided to quit, you couldn't;
“They did emotional blackmail.”
This former gymnast left the CTEIB in 2015 and signed up for another sport: “I am 50 times healthier mentally than I was at that time.”
This newspaper has also spoken with athletes who do not have bad memories.
Like Magdalena Garau, who left gymnastics in 2017, and assures that she can only say “good things” about Mir.
Andrea González Canoyra left the sport a year and a half ago and assures that she didn't see anything either: "Gymnastics is hard and a coach has to be hard, it's not very nice to say it, but it has to be that way."
A third of her claims that Pedro was like “a second father” to her and that he “did a lot for gymnastics.”
However, in the extensive report with accusations against Mir, at least eleven controversial episodes are recounted.
Only three are detailed below.
In the first, Mir asks that a certificate of sporting fitness be issued for a gymnast to compete at the end of January when the surgeon who operated on her in December assures that she cannot return before March.
From the medical center, therefore, they do not issue that certificate, although they assure that she was already training.
“This is the order of the day, especially in some sports,” says the expert on protection from abuse in sports.
“Anyone who says otherwise is lying.
The medical services are not in charge, the sports management is in charge.
A physiotherapist who causes problems and delays discharge is replaced,” he adds.
“Then the athlete breaks and what bad luck.
It's not bad luck, it's bad practice.
The argument they use to defend themselves is always the same: we only take it to its sporting limit.”
In a second case, a minor athlete sprains her foot in training and leaves the emergency room with crutches, a cast boot, and a diagnosis of a third-degree sprain of a ligament.
Three days later, her parents pick her up at the technical training center and the minor is not wearing the plaster boot: a physiotherapist, at the technician's direction, replaces it with a Walker boot (a type of splint with velcro closures ).
The mother of the minor asks Pedro Mir for explanations and he responds that "they are the protocols, you cannot spend a long time with your foot immobilized, that boot can be taken off to do things little by little."
This minor (13 years old), without having fully recovered from the tear of two ligaments, will compete in a championship because, when the tests to access the training center approached, the technician asked her if she wanted to participate and she agreed with the condition of make only one element.
She did them all.
“We all trained injured”
Another gymnast, of legal age and considered essential to aspire to obtain an Olympic place, competed with an injury against the doctor's opinion and trained and competed the following season without the surgeon who operated on her being discharged.
What's more, while she was deciding whether or not she would undergo surgery again, Pedro Mir Homar signed her up for a competition, as he informed the doctor, "so that the girl does not get overwhelmed during this waiting period."
This is what appears in the documentation to which this newspaper has had access.
The gymnast always agreed to do it and was aware of her injuries.
One of the gymnasts who spoke with EL PAÍS corroborates: “Recoveries in gymnastics had to be as quick as possible, we all trained injured and whoever says no is lying.
I remember the case of a gymnast, who was coming from one of her numerous knee operations, and seeing Pedro Mir sit on that knee so that he could have it stretched like the other as soon as possible.
I still remember today her screams of pain, her crying, how she asked him to stop.”
Another gymnast from a later era relates the same: “There have been girls who have competed with a torn meniscus.
Strips based on Ibuprofen and Enantyum.
Rest and rehabilitation times were never respected, you always had to return as quickly as possible so that you were more or less healthy.
I saw cases of crying from pain and continuing.
Also because of the fear of reactions, Pedro imposed a lot.”
A third, who had to leave the sport due to injuries and was one of the witnesses called by the Juvenile prosecutor, says that there should be more limits: “Because at 12 years old you do what the coach tells you, without thinking about the consequences.
I have felt forced to do more than I could do;
On a psychological level for me that was the worst, it also affected me on a day-to-day basis afterwards.
'Come on, you have to compete, infiltrate, hold on, you have to do it,' they told me.
And he competed.
“All this was with the consent of my parents.”
The coach ordered the installation, according to the health personnel's complaint, of the physiotherapy table in the training room, thus violating the privacy of the athletes, who did not have a private space in which to be treated and speak freely with the health workers.
Mir was, instead of the doctor, the one who decided who and when the gymnasts had to be treated.
In the individual writings of the health workers, sent to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Sports that requested them, the doctors and physiotherapists speak of coercion “both to the athletes not to follow our guidelines and also to us (...).
All of this, in many cases, has generated a worsening of the injuries and their symptoms, among other consequences.”
They report that the effect of Mir's
modus operandi
is “an increase in the gymnasts' pain, thereby increasing the risk of injury and decreasing their mood and well-being.”
Another specialist details the pressures.
He says he has attended “on several occasions” specific situations “with different athletes, in which they were forced to train and compete with injuries, despite clear symptoms and signs of pain and disability.
Even in severe cases of stress bone fractures.”
For their part, the three professionals in the socio-educational field, who had between 14 and 20 years of experience, who made the other report critical of Mir, alerted the direction, management and the head of Equality of the Government's Balearic Sports Foundation. insular.
One of those three professionals, a pedagogue, says: “We have worked for many years in the social field and we saw that in the sports field the issue of abuse was a world apart and that there was an urgent need to address prevention and detection.”
In her memory they detailed physical and verbal abuse (with coercion of athletes), abuse of power, sexism, inequality in treatment and machismo.
One of these professionals summarizes the atmosphere that she detected like this: “We are facing a case of abuse of power exercised over a group of athletes and part of the technical staff.”
The report made a series of recommendations, but seeing that they fell on deaf ears, the three authors of the document notified the IMAS, the Balearic child protection service, of what they had detected.
“The person who received the report called me and told me that it was very
serious
, that she would talk about it with his superior and she would let me know so I could notify the Juvenile Prosecutor's Office.
She called me back on time.
“She told me that there was nothing to do because the minors were not unprotected minors, they had families who took care of them,”
says one of these professionals.
If you know of any case of abuse in Spanish sport that has not seen the light, you can write to:
Abusos@elpais.es
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