The documentary Ayuso doesn't want you to see
On Thursday night, TVE premiered 7291, the documentary that details the management of nursing homes in the autonomous community of Madrid during the COVID-19 pandemic. The investigation focuses primarily on the height of the crisis, during the months of March and April 2020. In Madrid, an estimated 9,470 people died in nursing homes, but the figure in the documentary's title refers to those who were not referred to hospitals when they were in very serious condition. They died in very poor health conditions because the Ayuso government's protocol explicitly prohibited their transfer.
7291 It aired simultaneously on La 2 and at 24h. You can catch it up on the RTVE Play platform. It runs for two hours and isn't easy to watch. Not only because of its devastating content, but because it's an austere production that prioritizes information over television pretensions. 7291 It's heavy, but it's done with the utmost conscience of those responsible. And this is another element worth highlighting. The program's credits only include two names: José Camacho, music editor, and Juanjo Castro, who serves as producer and director, and who is supposed to have done everything else. 7291 It is a documentary in the strictest sense: it aims to document, to record facts so that citizens can access them. The result is an audiovisual that simply compiles, organizes, and contextualizes the witnesses who participated in the citizen commission that investigated the management of the deceased in Madrid's nursing homes after the Ayuso government halted the official commission in the Community Assembly.
The documentary begins with some very basic preliminaries to guarantee the viewer thorough information. It explains what nursing homes are, who lives there, their characteristics, their function, and how they are managed. This is important to understand their circumstances once these centers were isolated and without the possibility of accessing logical and essential medical care. Evidence and data are provided to support the participants' account. Nursing home workers, technical managers of the pandemic, and relatives of the victims offer their testimony. Many of the stories are devastating."They were dying, holding onto the handrails by their legs because they couldn't breathe," A worker explains the suffering of the patients due to their lack of access to the morphine that would have helped ease their agony. Sporadically, archive images of Ayuso's interventions during that period are inserted, highlighting not only the poor management but also the political manipulation to cover up disastrous protocols.
7291 It's a harsh blow to accept and a very sensitive documentary to watch for anyone who has suffered the loss of a family member in these facilities. It forces reflection and, above all, reminds us all that it's urgent and mandatory to rethink healthcare management in nursing homes, regardless of any pandemic.
