The rural pharmacists of Navarra: “I am here because I have aid. If they take them away from me, I'm leaving"

Irati Alduntzin (Pamplona, ​​25 years old) defines herself as a Sunday woman, that is, from the town of Abaurrea Alta, in the Aezkoa Valley (Navarra), a place where she always wanted to live.

When she finished her Pharmacy degree, she tried working in places in the capital, but she did not finish finding her place and she decided to try her luck in the Navarrese Pyrenees.

After a first experience in Burguete, she got to know the best and the worst of rural pharmacies and, when the substitution ended, she visited "all the pharmacies in the Pyrenees, from Erro to Roncal with my CV".

Among her reasons are that in the city, customers treat staff differently.

"Here, the patients are the same as always, they have a little more respect for you, you talk to the health center every day and you are in direct contact with the doctor to talk about the treatment."

However, if he had the opportunity to be the owner of one of these pharmacies, he doesn't know if he would take the step: “Rural pharmacies have to use State aid, and if one day it is taken away, they will disappear.

The problem is that they are no longer a business, but a service.

If they now ask me to take a pharmacy in the area, I would think about it a lot, ”he admits.

For now, he has achieved a compromise solution.

Thanks to Gu Pirinioa -We are Pirineo and the Emplea Foundation- she has worked as a substitute in three pharmacies that have coordinated to prepare a joint calendar.

Everyone wins: Irati has enough work to live there and the holders can afford to hire a person to cover them during their payroll, sick leave and vacations.

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This is how a town dies

The idea arose within the framework of a project of the Pyrenees Plan.

Also called Gu Pirinioa, it affects a total of 32 municipalities, which account for 14.7% of the territory of Navarre, but where only a little more than 5,400 inhabitants live on the census in scattered nuclei.

This plan, promoted by the Table of the Pyrenees, the Foral Parliament and Government, the public company Lursarea-Nasuvinsa and the local action group Cederna Garalur, is based on a system of co-governance in which companies and citizens are involved.

This is detailed by Naia Sánchez, a member of the technical team, who underlines the relevance that projects related to entrepreneurship have acquired in recent years.

Among them, the “Lekukoa, Pirineo mentor” program, which was devised with the aim of promoting generational renewal and improving the quality of life of traditional trades.

Among the initiatives, they have created an entrepreneurship ecosystem, a group of people "who act as a welcome nucleus to welcome those who come to the territory with a project and who at first always feel a little lost, both in a technical and social sphere" .

At the beginning of the program, they hired Fundación Emplea, which, in an initial analysis, detected the poor quality of life of pharmaceutical professionals.

It was the germ of a project in which Irati Alduntzin, who was already working in the area, has been key.

The initiative has its limitations because Alduntzin does not cover all the pharmacies in the area, but there is not enough workload for two people either.

To this we must add the delicate economic situation of the pharmacies themselves.

Virtually all of them are classified as VEC (Committed Economic Viability).

The fundamental factors that explain it are the drop in prices, depopulation and the abundance of licenses.

Until the end of November, Navarra was one of the autonomous communities with the most VEC pharmacies.

Now, with the change in national legislation, their number is going to be reduced, although for a technical matter, since the conditions to be qualified as such are tougher.

The Government is responsible for the existence of this service in the towns and they are the ones who have to be ahead of us

Mari Carmen De Carlos, Aribe pharmacist

Subsidies are essential for the survival of rural pharmacies.

This is asserted by David García, a pharmacist from Valcarlos (358 inhabitants in 2018).

“The situation is precarious, no, the following.

I am here because I have help.

If they take them away from me, I close.

I can't pay the rent, the electricity, or anything."

García details that when he arrived in the town 21 years ago, he had a profit margin of about 3,000 euros a month.

Today “there are really no benefits because they are subject to aid.

If I had them, I would be a mileurista”.

The main difficulties he encounters in his daily life are the drop in the price of medicines: "Lower the price, lower the margin and you run out of money", depopulation and the need to contribute to the unemployment fund with a 7% of the billing.

"In my case it is almost 500 euros per month," he adds.

There is another problem, the difficulty to find substitutes.

The last one has left because he has found something more stable and only with Alduntzin, he assures, it is impossible to cover all the pharmacies.

Mari Carmen De Carlos, a pharmacist from Aribe (36 inhabitants in 2018) has been of the same opinion for 35 years.

She was born in Pamplona and raised in Navascués, she demands that the conditions be toughened to be able to open a pharmacy, since it is easier in Navarra than in the rest of the national territory.

From the Official College of Pharmacists, Marta Galipienzo confirms that the Foral Community is the only one "where it is allowed to open one if there is a gap, while in the rest of the communities there are contests."

That is to say, in the rest, when an increase in inhabitants is registered, it is analyzed in which localities it has occurred and if it is necessary to open a new pharmaceutical premises in them.

This license is awarded to the professional with the most merits (experience in rural pharmacies, studies, etc.).

However, "in Navarra it is not necessary to compete."

It is enough to meet the conditions: that there is at least one pharmacy in municipalities with more than 700 inhabitants (it is allowed to open one even if that number of census takers is not reached) and that there is a minimum distance between establishments of 150 meters.

"If you meet these conditions and find the premises, you ask for the license and they authorize it," says Galipienzo.

For his part, De Carlos has been asking the regional government for years to adopt measures to guarantee the survival of these businesses because they are "an essential service."

Especially for older people who cannot drive to travel to other locations.

De Carlos has already passed retirement age and recognizes, from close testimonies, that it is difficult to transfer the pharmacy, although he has not yet considered it.

"I can retire whenever I want, but I continue because I think I'm in a position."

He is clear that when he decides to sell the pharmacy, he will try to get relief and contact the Government of Navarra.

He does not want to leave the town without this service, which covers the nine towns in the Aezkoa Valley.

"I'm not going to go to the tremendous," he asserts.

In any case, he concludes,

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