Nursing homes bear the enormous responsibility of ensuring a dignified life for thousands of citizens, many of whom arrive to spend the most fragile and vulnerable years of their lives. Their work is essential, as the sector itself acknowledges when it denounces the lack of human and material resources with which it faces this task, in a country where, given the ever-increasing life expectancy, these facilities and services will become increasingly necessary.

A Madrid court continues its investigation into the protocols in place in the Community of Madrid during the pandemic that restricted the transfer of elderly residents from care homes to hospitals, effectively denying them healthcare. Due to the coronavirus, 7,291 people died in care homes. On Monday, Carlos Mur, who is under investigation in the case and was the Director of Social and Healthcare Coordination at the time, testified and began pointing fingers at higher levels of the administration. For the private prosecution, led by the Marea de Residencias (Care Home Tide) movement, his testimony represents a significant step forward, despite revealing a strategy of evading responsibility among those involved in healthcare management. After four failed attempts to get him to testify, he finally did so via videoconference from Andorra.

The modernization of nursing homes, homes for people with disabilities, and mental health centers will have to wait. The Generalitat (Catalan government) is giving centers another year to demonstrate that their facilities and services meet the necessary standards to be able to offer places to beneficiaries of the dependency law. This accreditation process was originally scheduled to end next month, but the Department of Social Rights and Inclusion has postponed the deadline until October 2026 to facilitate the correction of the deficiencies that currently prevent them from obtaining approval and prevent their closure.

Hand disability and dependency, complementary aid, and more support at home. These are some of the new features of the draft reform of the dependency and disability laws that the Council of Ministers approved this Tuesday in the second round of voting. It now faces parliamentary proceedings. The Minister of Social Rights, Pablo Bustinduy, has defended the initiatives as "far-reaching" in the legislature because, on the one hand, they protect people with disabilities from discrimination and, on the other, they project the new care model into the future, assuming the high rates of population aging in the coming years.

Mothers with dependent children who must stop working. Daughters or wives who care for parents or partners at home"Families, primarily women, are forced to sacrifice themselves, to make great sacrifices of their lives," summarizes Gustavo García, coordinator of the 2024 DESC Index, which the State Association of Directors and Managers of Social Services uses annually to compile official figures on the state of public social services. The phrase serves to illustrate the extent to which the new home care models advocated by all governments (the ministry is implementing a deinstitutionalization strategy) fail when they clash with the reality of households that must do their part to care for dependent family members with the limited public aid they receive.

This Wednesday we signed the Second addendum of 2025 to the sectoral agreement on the bases for the construction of a social services system specific to Catalonia, an agreement between the Government, unions, and employers' associations to improve the sector and the working conditions of professionals and ensure the sustainability of the companies that provide this service.

More than five years later, justice begins to settle accounts for The 7,291 people who died in the Community of Madrid's nursing homes During the pandemic, for the first time, two former senior officials in Isabel Díaz Ayuso's government will have to testify as suspects in a judicial proceeding, according to a statement from two victims' associations. And legal sources confirm this. Throughout this time, the Madrid president has avoided self-criticism regarding her administration's actions during COVID-19.

Social sector professionals urge the government and parliamentary groups to approve a "credit supplement" that will improve the working conditions of their staff and begin the path toward equalizing the salaries of professionals in the field of dependency with those in healthcare. The organizations—from private centers and the third sector—consider the 5% increase approved last December to be "totally insufficient" and therefore propose doubling that amount, reaching 10%. "The sector is saying enough," they affirm.

For at least eight months, the 24 elderly people admitted to the Santlisart residence in Sant Quirze del Vallès were fed with meals that would correspond to eighteen people. From September 2015 to April 2016, there is no record of any payment for breakfast or snacks in the accounts of the nursing home. The centre only spent 4.90 euros on food per person per day, half the average among nursing homes at that time. "It was absolutely insufficient, we considered that we should report it to the Public Prosecutor's Office," said an inspector from the Generalitat in the trial that began this Tuesday in the Court of Barcelona. The sentences to which the four accused are exposed exceed fifty years in prison.

Dozens of families are trying to take to court care homes where their parents or grandparents died during the first waves of covid in 2020 as a way to complete their process of mourning . "Until I find out the truth I will not be able to finish this strange mourning," confesses one of those affected by the Residencial Palau nursing home, in the town of Palau-solità i Plegamans, the latest addition to list of homes denounced by the Prosecutor's Office so that a court in Sabadell can investigate whether there was negligence in the 40 deaths during those dramatic months. The witness, who prefers not to identify herself, claims that the search for justice also responds to the fact that she owes it to her dead father: "responsibilities [must] be clarified and the facts [must] be clarified".

Care homes for the elderly will have to be more flexible when it comes to allowing outings and visits. The new protocol made public by the Department of Health and the Department of Social Rights will allow visitis to homes with active covid-19 outbreaks (listed red). Healthy and fully vaccinated residents can have contact with their families if everyone around them is immunised

Deaths from coronavirus in Catalonia have fallen by 89% in five months, according to data from the Department of Health: while in January 2,159 people died with covid, in May it was 231 (with consolidated data up to the 27th). Vaccination has played a key role in achieving this drop, according to the head of epidemiology at Vall d'Hebron Hospital, Magda Campins, and Biocom researcher Clara Prats. "The over-70s were the group with most deaths; now, thanks to vaccination, almost none of them is admitted to hospital because if they catch covid, most of them are asymptomatic," says the doctor. And she adds: "The weather or restrictions affect all age groups in the same way, but the groups where there is a clearer decline is among the vaccinated."

The coronavirus has caused the death of more than 75,000 people in Spain and has also caused the rest of Spaniards to lose years of life expectancy. In 2019 life expectancy was 84 years, but after a year of pandemic and lockdown, the figure has fallen to 82.4. That is, due to the pandemic, Spaniards' life expectancy has fallen by 1.6 years. In fact, Spain has become the EU country which has registered the most significant decline in life expectancy, according to the EU statistics office, Eurostat.

Pandemic visits. The Ascaso Amills siblings shout: "Sign us up, we will come on Wednesdays and Fridays" to the assistant who takes their mother to the interior of the care home. Maria Amills will be 101 years old and was the first to be vaccinated at the Sant Joan de Déu residence in Martorell, where 99% of the users and 87% of the workers are already immunized but, nevertheless, they have not relaxed any of the anti-covid measures: sectored spaces, stable coexistence bubbles, and family visits through the perimeter fence of the huge enclosure. Although the effect of the vaccines has already been felt with the reduction in the number of outbreaks and that next week all homes will receive the second dose, the Department of Health does not contemplate more lax guidelines, as requested by some of the families. It is getting antigen test kits for visits -restricted, and weekly- but this is "insufficient," says Vicente Botella, president of Upimir, the employers' association of small and medium nursing homes. Insufficient in quantity and also to "ensure that a person is protected", warns Salvador Macip, a researcher at the University of Leicester and the UOC. The scientist maintains that the measures can be "relaxed a little", with distance, hygiene and face masks, but it must be borne in mind that the virus circulates "in both directions and a vaccinated person can infect" a visitor and cause an outbreak. Total immunity is not 100% guaranteed.

Fortunately, the vaccination of residents and workers of nursing homes is progressing at a good pace and next week the Department of Health expects to be able to administer all the second doses required. The fact that all residents are vaccinated, however, will not, at least initially, lead to a change in the protocol that currently regulates trips and visits. This has led to there being voices in favour of a relaxation of the protocol so that the residents, who have already suffered a situation of isolation and stress due to the pandemic, can see that the fact of being vaccinated has some benefit for them.