The big day of Bethlehem: three years of waiting to tell how her mother died in a residence in Madrid during the pandemic

Thirty minutes before entering the courts of Leganés, Belén Muñoz asks for a linden with sugar. His hands shake, he takes a first sip and spills the contents of the glass on the table. "I'm very nervous," she apologizes. It's half past nine in the morning and a handful of people rush breakfast at the bar in the square. None of them knows that the 57-year-old woman with short hair who clutches a taco of folios has been waiting for this day for three years. A date marked and remarked on the calendar: May 17, 2023. Thursday. At 10 o'clock, in front of the judge, the prosecutor and two lawyers, Muñoz will tell how his mother died in the Vitalia Home Leganés residence, where a total of 96 elderly people died during the first month of the pandemic. Then, the regional government imposed protocols on hospitals that denied the transfer to thousands of elderly people who lived in one of the 500 residences in Madrid and condemned them to die alone in their rooms.

―What makes you nervous?

―Forgetting something and not being able to explain everything well.

He enters the room and stands in front of the microphone. On the right, Vitalia's two lawyers, male and female; On the left, the prosecutor, and in front, behind a table shaped like an ele, the judge. Bethlehem turns her back on the empty wooden benches. He has slept little and the night before he tried to watch the debate on Telemadrid. He didn't hold on. But thanks to the messages of his friends, he has seen what was surely the golden minute: the candidate of Podemos-IU-Green Alliance, Alejandra Jacinto, shows the camera the book by Alberto Reyero, the former Minister of Social Policies, entitled They will die unworthily (Libros del KO). It describes something that Belén lived in her flesh, the evasiveness of the Government of Ayuso before the death of 7,291 elderly in the residences.

"I have it at home," he will say as he leaves the courthouse and after facing many questions. The judge, she says, is "empathetic" and that relaxes her. Every time Belén gets excited, she asks him if he needs to stop for a few minutes. "I tell him no, I want to go on leaving nothing behind." The prosecutor is more direct and focuses on a specific question.

―Did you know the existence of the protocols?

"Nope.

―Did anyone from the residence inform you of the protocols?

―No

The lawyers do not ask anything and, an hour later, just before ending the statement, Belén makes a last request, almost a plea: "Please, that this does not go unpunished, that there are responsibilities."

The woman who leaves the three-storey salmon-colored building at 11 a.m. is no longer nervous. She smiles, raises her arms, jumps and waves, euphoric, the same papers that she used to fiddle with non-stop and that she has reread so many times: death certificates, medical reports, death counts, phone calls and a detailed account of what happened between March 00 and April 13, 13 in the residence. "I've said it all! I've done great!" she screams, and her older sister, Esperanza, hugs her. They burst into tears. "For mom," says one. "Yes, for her," replies the other. Next to them await María Antonia – they call her Toñi – twin of Belén, and Mari Carmen, the middle one. They are the four daughters of Esperanza Tavira de Andrés, a native of Guadalajara who died on March 2020, 19 at the age of 2020, a week earlier.

Belén Muñoz in a bar in Leganés with Begoña García, another of the people who has testified in the court of the municipality. Samuel Sanchez

Like them, hundreds of people have turned to justice in the last three years to clarify the deaths in the centers and most are still waiting for their cases to prosper. Many have not been successful judicially because the Prosecutor's Office has closed the investigations. In fact, Amnesty International criticized the shelving because the cases – at least 451 of the 517 opened, according to the NGO – were closed without a minimum investigation. In a hundred of them, the relatives of the victims were not even interviewed.

"You have to go up to the virgin to put a candle on her." "And some flowers!" "Yes, some flowers." The sisters sit on the terrace of the same bar where in the morning Belén reviewed dates and names. She pulls out a pink frame with her mother's photo from the cloth bag she carries on her arm. "I bring her with me," he says, and the four begin to remember. "The worst thing has been my head, imagining mom's last moments over and over again," says Mari Carmen. It took them a long time to know in what conditions Esperanza died and every piece of information they collect – thanks to another relative of the residence or an employee or to the medical reports, which they received, after much insistence, three months after death – leads them to relive everything again. "When Ossorio [the vice president of the Community of Madrid] said that we had already overcome it ... Look, if I have it in front of me I don't know what I'm doing," adds Toñi.

Along with the four sisters, 23 more families – children, nephews, grandchildren – have filed a complaint against Vitalia Leganés for homicide and injuries due to recklessness and omission of the duty of help. All of them will be declaring, one by one, until June 7. On Thursday, in addition to Bethlehem, three other people stood in front of the microphone to narrate the story they have repeated so many times in their heads. Doctors from the hospital and staff of the residence have also been passing through the second floor of the courts of Leganés, after the Provincial Court of Madrid ordered a more exhaustive investigation to the judge who, in July 2021, archived the case of that center and three others in the municipality south of Madrid, of almost 187,000 inhabitants.

From left, María Antonia, Mari Carmen, Belén and Esperanza Muñoz Tavira, at the door of the court of first instance of Leganés, (Madrid). Samuel Sanchez

Since the death of her mother, Belén says that she is not the same and that she regularly goes to the psychologist: "I accumulate a lot of anger, frustration, need for revenge. I take it with my sisters, I get angry with other people. My daughter keeps repeating to me how much she suffers from seeing me like this and that we are not going to get her grandmother back. But it's time to do justice, they give us the opportunity to let it be known." Remembering hurts though, and this month has been difficult. "I've been through it crying," she says.

The last time Esperanza, widowed since 2017, was with her four daughters, they drank hot chocolate. "Do you remember? That she didn't want to take it, she just wanted to go for a walk," says Mari Carmen. Everyone remembers her as a woman in constant movement – "the walker of the residence" – who sang, danced, helped her husband in the shoe workshop and gave classes. In 2020, the woman had been in the residence for a year and seven months and had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. "But it reminded us. We went to visit her every day, one afternoon each," says Belén. Until at the beginning of March they prevented the entry to the relatives in the residences. The last day one of the four saw her alive was the 10th. The 12th was his birthday and until the 19th they took turns calling the center. They always told them it was okay. From there, the story doctors and employees told each varies.

"They told me that they put her in palliatives because she was very bad," explains Mari Carmen.

"Well, no, Mom was screaming and kicking. He puts it in the report, Belén clarifies.

"So, your last moments were like this?" asks Toñi.

What is clear is that the residence confined the elderly in their rooms, that the relatives did not receive information about their state of health and that at 17:36 p.m. an employee of the center told Belén that her mother was very well and that she had snacked on a jelly. "But hadn't she been put in hospice care?" she wondered. At 19:30 p.m. and after five calls, a doctor tells her that she has been given morphine and that she will be contacted the next day because "I'm sure she's better." An hour and 20 minutes later, Mari Carmen is the one who receives a call. "My sister calls me at nine, she tells me: 'Bethlehem, that mother has died, that it cannot be. No, no! That you've been told that I had eaten, that it was fine." Mari Carmen and Toñi show up at the center, but they are not allowed to see Esperanza for the last time.

During these three years, each one has discovered what is good for them to face the grief. The eldest, Esperanza, likes to see old photos, something that also comforts her sisters. "And I kept a doll of his," she says. Toñi and Mari Carmen sometimes get in the car and pass in front of the residence, only to look at it from afar. Bethlehem has set up an altar in her home and in the village, with flowers, souvenirs and lights. "I'm coming to buy batteries, because the photos have to always be illuminated," he says. In the attic he still keeps the two garbage bags and suitcase they were given at the residence, filled with his mother's clothes. They haven't opened them yet. And they don't know if they ever will.

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