Three former senior health officials from the Community of Madrid of Isabel Díaz Ayuso will testify this Tuesday and Wednesday as defendants in two courts investigating the deaths of elderly people in residences in Valdebernardo and Torrelodones during the pandemic. This will be Carlos Mur, general director of the Socio-Health Coordination and who signed the different versions of the so-called “protocols of shame” by the people concerned; his successor, Francisco Javier Martínez Peromingo; and the then leader of Summa 112 in the region, Pablo Busca.
The three former senior officials are summoned to testify on Tuesday, December 9, as the investigation by the Court of Instruction number 23 of Madrid, from 10:00 a.m., where the complaint filed by the relative of a person who lived in the Amavir Valdebernardo residence is analyzed. A day later and at the same time, they will do the same before the investigating court number 2 of Collado Villalba for a complaint filed by a relative of a person who lived in the Sanitas Torrelodones residence. These are declarations that were already called several months ago but which suffered from delays due to the distribution of cases between the different courts in the region.
Mur was the senior official who signed the various versions of the protocols that established who could or could not be transferred to a hospital and that stopped the referral of dependents, except those who had private insurance or lived at home. He was fired in May 2020 and replaced by Francisco Javier Martínez Peromingo, who until then was a geriatrician at hospitals managed by Quirón. According to Mur, Peromingo was the author of other draft protocols and was involved in their drafting in this capacity, even though he was outside the ministry’s chain of command at the time. He is also not currently part of the regional executive: he has returned to the Quirón group.
Both have already given their version of events and contradicted each other. During his appearance at the commission of inquiry opened at the Madrid Assembly, Mur named Peromingo himself as the person who coordinated with 18 geriatricians the text that he then signed. Peromingo assured that he did not agree with the “more restrictive” exclusion criteria – in reference to the text which spoke of the Barthel index, used to determine whether a person can carry out certain daily tasks alone – which were written: “We told him that we did not agree,” he said. Both Mur and Peromingo argued that the protocols “were general recommendations or guidelines that did not require enforcement.”
In recent years, Ayuso’s tone against those who talk about the tragedy of the residences has increased. During a plenary session in February 2024, he suggested that elderly people sick with COVID-19 early in the pandemic were going to die, whether they were transferred to hospitals or remained isolated in nursing homes. “There were deaths everywhere: in homes, in hospitals, in residences,” he explained. The president has called associations that work for the memory of the deceased “political platforms” and, in February this year, she accused the opposition of “always doing the same stupid thing” when asked what was happening in centers for the elderly.
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