Remember the Applause for the Healthcare Workers?

Stoke the fear, Reap the rewards

Deep in the pandemic, people vented their frustration and showed their support out their windows every evening at 8pm. Where is that support now. This week's Camino a Ítaca looks at the  dangerous slide towards privatizing a world class health system. Click over to read the original piece in Spanish in el HOY or read the English translation before. (PDF en castellano abajo).

One of my first experiences with the Spanish health service was as a teacher rather than a patient. A group of differing specialists were some of my very first students in Caceres and our classes were held in San Pedro de Alcantara hospital. One day class happened to coincide with a high level event being held across the street in the San Francisco complex and security was tight.

This was during the aftermath of the September 11^th attacks and events like these saw more security than ever. Security checkpoints were everywhere and the pulmonologist from the group was sent out to lead me through the successive security cordons.

We progressed through the various rings of police when we were stopped inside the hospital by the Guardia Civil and told that I didn’t have the proper access and could go no further.

At this, the pulmonologist became livid, “What do you mean our teacher can’t pass? He’s obviously no terrorist. Why don’t you stop someone who is actually doing something wrong? Like that guy over there!” At this he pointed towards a patient, complete in his hospital gown, smoking directly under a sign forbidding it.

Things have changed a lot since that rather uncomfortable moment. Smoking is no longer ubiquitous and you can’t conceive of someone smoking in a public place in front of a police officer, let alone in a hospital. True, it’s still never entirely clear which laws will be overlooked or ignored, but smoking in public thankfully isn’t one of them.

What hasn’t changed is the professionalism and dedication of our healthcare workers. Heaven forbid that anyone should fall ill or be injured abroad, but in the case that they are, they very soon appreciate just how skilled those who work here really are.

Unfortunately, what has changed is the support they receive from the public administration. Madrid may get all the negative press about their deteriorating, increasingly privatized health service, but when was the last time you tried to get an appointment with your doctor?

Long gone are the days when you could get an appointment the same day or the next at the latest. Now waits of four, five days, even a week are the norm. And that is if you don’t live in towns like Guadalupe, where there is an acute lack of specialists.

Spain’s world class health service was one of the initial attractions that made me realize just how high the quality of life is here. It’s a service that directly affects everyone regardless of their political leanings. Even if you do have enough to pay for private health insurance, when things get serious, it’s often the public health service that ends up saving lives.

The private healthcare giants are, however, devious and have infiltrated both major parties. In doing so, they have pushed for this deterioration of services across the country. A move which has directly translated into record numbers for them.

Public health is a question of equality. Unless we wish to be forced to run #GoFundMe campaigns to help pay for cancer treatments as they do in America, in the upcoming elections support the party that makes public healthcare a genuine commitment.

Showing their True Colors

Have mercy! Been waiting for the bus all day on the Camino a Ítaca. Things are going to get partisan ugly this election year here in Spain and a simple bus ride can tell the tale. Click over to read the originally published version in Spanish at el HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

A lone, conscientious smoker stands downwind from the sundry crowd. With each drag on his cigarette, he checks his watch and nervously looks up the street. Less thoughtful smokers heedlessly fumigate the crowd standing around them, sharing their cancerous, time-killing smoke with bystanders and passersby alike. Under their shuffling feet, the tile is littered with relics of the legions of blithe smokers who stood there before them, waiting.

Impenetrable scribblings of unimaginative graffiti artists are etched into the poles and scrawled on the walls. To the left, a pair of middle-aged mothers commiserate over their grocery trolleys about their futile efforts to minimize the effect of the rising costs of living, while to the right, a young family of immigrants dote on a baby swathed in warm blankets in her carriage. The baby’s older brother sits quietly in his stroller beside her, mesmerized by a series playing on a mobile phone perched on his lap.

Groups of teenagers talking just loud enough to cut through the surrounding traffic, exude vitality and energy, striking a stark contrast to the blank, waiting faces around them. The tepid afternoon sun shines just in the spot where savvy pensioners jostle to catch the last dying rays. Those who have found a seat under the shelter sit like waiting crouching turtles as they stare down at their mobile phones.

It’s a familiar scene that repeats itself at bus stops in cities across the region. But as each rider struggles to find the still obligatory face mask as they get on the bus, they realize that not everyone is going to pay the same price.

That’s because the central government has offered to subsidize 30 percent of bus fares until June. That is provided that the municipalities contribute at least another 20 percent of the cost, thus implying a substantial discount of at least half the price. In Caceres, riders will enjoy a 50% discount while in Merida they have agreed to 100%.

But why aren’t the same benefits being enjoyed in Badajoz and Plasencia?

The answer is simple, if slightly nauseating: partisan politics.

Rather than accept the generous, albeit clearly electoral gesture from the central government, each city governed by the opposition has made the conscious decision to reject a measure that directly benefits those who use public transport to go about their day to day. Rather than offer some relief to those from all sides of the political spectrum struggling to cope with the inflationary crisis, they have declined the offer in a vain attempt to silence the measure and diminish its electoral repercussions in an election year.

Back at the bus stop, I look around and realize that someone is missing from the scene. This portrait of the city, reflected in its bus riders, is fullish but somewhat incomplete. It brings to mind the words of the ex-mayor of Bogota, Enrique Peñalosa. Words that would be better suited on the wall than all the meaningless scribble.

“An advanced city is not one in which the poor can move around in a car, but one in which even the rich use public transportation.”

And then I come to a disturbing conclusion. Maybe there’s more to their refusal than just politics?