The mother arrested in Madrid for leaving her daughter alone arrived in Spain fleeing from the drug trafficker from Colombia: "If I don't work, how do I support it?"

If Catalina Delgado (fictitious name), 23, had wanted to leave her daughter to go to work, she says that she would have done so any day before November 28, 2019. In Cali (Colombia), the drug trafficker had threatened two of his brothers and everything in the family home was in danger.

That day the three of them and the one and a half year old girl left on a flight to Madrid with no return.

On the other side of the pond was the possibility that the little girl had a more profitable future than hers, that she had left a good part of her youth in a textile factory in the Colombian Pacific for a handful of pesos.

If she didn't regret parting with her daughter, she would have left her there, with her father and the rest of her family.

But Catalina carries in her bowels the memory of an emptiness, that of the absence of her mother, who abandoned her five siblings —she,

On Thursday, February 16, the inconsolable crying of her daughter, almost at dawn, led a neighbor to alert the police.

Hours later, she was arrested for abandoning minors and the four-year-old girl was admitted to a shelter, where she remains today until a judge decides whether or not she should return to her mother.

Delgado, who prefers that her real name not appear while the process is being resolved, regrets and is ashamed of what she was "forced" to do, but rebels against the image of a "bad mother" disseminated by the media through following a note sent by the Police: "I have always worked as an intern taking care of the elderly and, whenever work has prevented me from taking care of my daughter, I have paid for someone to take care of her for me," she says.

“The woman I took care of died and I got that night job.

That day, at the last minute, all the people I usually go to and that my daughter loves and knows failed me, and I had to go to work, because if I don't work, how do I support her?

I have brought her forward alone, everything I have done in my life is for her, ”she says resignedly.

The girl had been sick for days and Delgado had missed work longer than expected to attend to her.

She had to go back to the bar.

The risks of losing a job like the one he had just gotten a month ago in a pub in Villaverde take on a different dimension for those who try to survive in a country that is not theirs and are part of the cruel circle of misery for thousands in the capital: without a work permit, there is no contract;

without a contract, there is no flat in your name;

without a flat in your name, there is no registration;

Without a way to prove income, there is no way to get a scholarship, for example, for the school cafeteria of your public school.

Delgado was in that loop the night he was put in shackles at the door of the disco pub.

On Thursday, February 16, the friend who always helped her take care of the girl failed her.

Her boyfriend, with whom she had gone to live since the end of last year and with whom she also counted on to stay with the little girl at night, had left 10 days ago to work in London.

Since he broke his clavicle, his options to work as a bricklayer in Madrid had also ended.

Delgado was alone with her daughter and she thought that she "would just be a

while she slept."

She had had to do it “just once before” and she trusted that, as she passed then, she would “come back and the girl would still be asleep”.

Two agents take the 23-year-old woman arrested for abandoning minors in Madrid to the police station. NATIONAL POLICE

She recounts sitting in a cafeteria in Madrid that that night she gave her daughter dinner, gathered her toys around the bed and left her mobile on next to her.

As if her device was an extension of him, to which he could turn if he wanted to know anything about her.

She knew how to get him off the hook.

He left her asleep, dressed and left the house around 10:30 p.m., hoping to return at four in the morning and see her in the same position.

Lying next to her for a couple of hours.

Pick her up, comb her hair and take her to school.

In the direction of the center they assure that they cannot provide any details of the situation of the minor.

That Thursday, around midnight, the girl's crying disturbed a neighbor.

He picked up the phone and dialed, as Delgado recounts that he used to make any noise, the police.

The agents showed up on the street and no one answered the doorbell.

According to information from the authorities, it was her little girl who opened the door after the agents communicated with her through a room adjoining the neighbor's apartment.

But Delgado explains that this is not possible, that between her room and the other house there is a room and that it was not the girl who opened it, but one of her roommates.

A guy from Pakistan who came back from working at his kebab like every night and barely speaks Spanish.

The other companion had not yet arrived at the house.

The Police entered the house and when they saw the girl alone they took her away.

From the phone that Delgado herself had left in the room, they located her partner (in London) and he, her boss at the bar.

She says that they told her something on the phone about "carrying weapons."

She stayed at the door of the premises to wait for the agents.

She never thought that she was related to her daughter.

“I thought maybe it had to do with one of my brothers.

Nobody explained to me what was happening until I got to the police station, ”she recounts.

Abandonment of minors.

Those words burn him a week after news circulated on Facebook with his handcuffed silhouette.

"It hurts me a lot to say that about me, they don't know me, it's not true.

They also put that my daughter had not eaten for hours, just a piece of bread, where do they get that from? ”, She asks herself indignantly.

Her sister-in-law, who is with her this afternoon, tries to calm her down by saying that all this will pass, because she must be sure of who she is and there are people who can confirm this, like the social worker at her school, like the pediatrician, like the few family that have in Spain.

“What do mothers think we do in that situation?

She is not the only one who has to do that at some point in her life, nothing is easy here, you know?" Points out her sister-in-law while her brother, who also accompanies her, nods seriously.

Trapped in Teruel

Since they landed in Madrid, nothing was easy.

The three brothers applied for asylum, although when they had the girl they considered her outside the family nucleus and she had to follow the process on her own.

Now, she only maintains a relationship with one of her brothers, who lives in Madrid.

The CEPAIM Foundation assisted her in the process that she had to continue in Teruel.

From the institution they corroborate that she entered their program on those dates.

Delgado went there alone with her daughter, on the eve of the global confinement due to the pandemic.

They provided her with a flat and money to buy food and support the girl for as long as the process lasted.

Two months later, she recalls, they told her that she had been denied asylum.

And everything got complicated.

The pandemic was worsening and she had been trapped in Teruel without a home or possible help.

She couldn't even return to Colombia,

closed for lockdown.

Not even with his brothers, each one in a part of Spain with internal travel restrictions.

In Teruel he got a job in the house of an older man.

She cleaned and took care of him and allowed the two of them to settle in his apartment.

She stayed for a year, until she decided to return to Madrid with her family.

She lived for a few months in her house in Entrevías until she got a job and a rented room in the apartment of a family friend, in Alto del Arenal.

Her new job was in Leganés, also as an intern (without papers), taking care of an elderly lady.

Her daughter stayed during the week with her friend and her mother, who took her to school and when she couldn't pay for the dining room, they fed her.

Delgado came back every weekend to see her.

“He still calls them mommy, they love each other very much,” she says.

The elderly woman she was caring for died at the end of the year and she decided to move into the flat of her boyfriend, with whom she has been dating for two years, which she shared with two men from Pakistan.

The landlord charged them 400 euros for a room in the three-bedroom house.

When her partner left for London, the price was left at 350. She got a job at the Villaverde bar because, although she hated working at night, “it was what it was”.

She says that they get around 900 euros a month, depending on the days that she can go and how generous the clients are with their tips.

Four days before she ended up at the police station, she had found out that she was almost five months pregnant.

The first time Delgado saw her baby in the ultrasound was in the medical examination that the Police did.

She was told that she was a girl and, although she cannot contain her emotion, she assures that she was not in her plans.

He was taking contraceptives due to ovarian cysts until his family doctor prescribed a hormone injection and he believes that this could have turned everything upside down.

She got pregnant right away.

And she realized when her partner was almost 2,000 kilometers away.

On Monday the trial will be held in which his immediate future and that of his daughter will be decided, whom he was able to see on Wednesday in the reception center for the first time.

As long as the process continues, Delgado is only allowed to see her once a week, although they can talk on the phone daily.

It comforts her to know that she is entertained playing with other children and that they have painted her nails, as she likes so much.

He cries when her daughter tells him that she misses her, when is he going to go with her.

“Why did you leave me alone that night, mom?” she recounts what she said to him the first time they spoke.

She doesn't know what to answer.

How he explains to her daughter that she is not like her mother.

“Everything, everything, is for her.

If I came here it was to give mine a better future”.

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