The doors and surroundings of around twenty health centers in the capital and the Community of Madrid dawned this Tuesday with anonymous posters against the health policy of Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
On the sheets, very simple and the size of an A-4, two phrases appear in black and white along with a photo of a very smiling President Ayuso.
“Is there no doctor today either?
It doesn't matter... you were going to die anyway,” they ask themselves and respond in clear allusion to a phrase, uttered by Ayuso just a week ago, that has hurt the relatives of the elderly so much.
“The elderly died as much or more in hospitals,” she said in an attempt to downplay the effect of the triage protocols that prevented thousands of elderly people from being transferred from nursing homes to hospitals when the coronavirus caused more deaths.
“It is a desperate protest, an attempt to raise one's voice and draw attention and to protest using the same arguments,” explains the doctor and spokesperson for the SAR-SUAP Platform of Madrid Out-of-Hospital Emergency professionals Isabel Barrio, which has counted posters in 20 outpatient clinics, including the health centers of the capital Paseo Imperial (Arganzuela), Hermanos García Noblejas (San Blas-Canillejas), Abrantes (Carabanchel), Avenida de Portugal (Latina), Federica Montseny (Puente de Vallecas) and Los Ángeles (Villaverde) and in the municipalities of Tres Cantos, Colmenar, Rivas-Vaciamadrid and Algete.
The posters, in the Los Angeles clinic (Villaverde).
This platform claims not to be behind these messages, whose authorship has not been claimed by any union, association or platform, but it does share their content.
“In the end, the demand comes from the same population, who is fed up with the situation of lack of health professionals in health centers,” says Barrio, for whom the president's comment that older people would have died is still "shameful".
“Evidently, they wouldn't have died anyway.
To begin with, dying alone in a bed is not the same as dying well cared for, sedated, with oxygen and with someone holding your hand and, to continue, we could have saved many, or are doctors and hospitals not worth it? nothing?”, the spokesperson is outraged.
“We think they may be from neighborhood associations or perhaps from the Marea de Residencias,” he points out, to underline that the management of the centers “are quickly removing them.”
Carmen Martín, spokesperson for Marea Residencias, also denies being behind this campaign.
“Everything this lady says [about Ayuso] quickly goes viral, like 'I like fruit.'
I don't like the phrase, I wouldn't have used it, because it hurts us a lot, but I understand that they used it to attract attention,” she says.
The mystery spreads among the neighbors.
“They are not ours and we have no idea where they come from,” says Luis López Álvarez, from the Villaverde neighborhood platform for Public Health, which organizes protests on Thursdays.
He is also a member of the Assembly Movement of Sanitary Workers (MATS), a union that is also not the author of the campaign.
Neighbors of the Neighborhoods and Towns of Madrid for Public Health also do not know its origin, confirms a spokesperson, José Manuel Hernández.
Two protest posters, torn from the vicinity of a health center.
And finally, the Amyts doctors' union has not placed them either, although it also shares the fund.
“It is not our style,” says spokesperson Isabel Vázquez, to remember that “a health center is a space for everyone.”
“Logically, given the extreme situation of some centers, these types of initiatives arise.
We have our channels to send our demands to the administration, but those who do not have them, look for a way to make their protests visible," understands Vázquez, to emphasize that "they should have put the authorship."
The Ministry of Health confirms having given the order to remove the posters, as already happened during the white tide and during the last health strikes.
“A health center is not a wall where you can put up posters for concerts or Wallapop sales, it is a public health space and has areas set up to be able to put up information both public service and other information dedicated to the union part,” says a spokesperson. who considers this poster “opinionative, political and union.”
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