đ° Spainâs Chaotic Ebola Death Watch
(11/10/2014) âBastards, useless cowardsâ, shouted the nurses watching the press conference, throwing surgical gloves at Mr. Rajoy as he was driven away.
(Originally published on October 11, 2014)
It has been a terrible week for government communications in Spain, and many Spanish media outlets have contributed to the confusion and chaos. Thursday was perhaps the worst day, of heightened confusion, contradictory confirmations and misinformation following the announcement by Mrs. Romeroâs brother that her condition had worsened considerably. The authorities had not counted on him deciding to just tell the truth to journalists waiting outside the hospital, and the Deputy Director of the Carlos III was forced to run out and issue an unplanned confirmation.
La InformaciĂłn and El PeriĂłdico published CCTV screen grabs of Mrs. Romero agonising in her hospital bed, taken from the video camera recording her suffering. It is not clear how they obtained the CCTV footage.
Regional TV in Castilla La Mancha did an Ebola show with the presenter brushing a glove against her face several times, in allusion to the accusations made against Teresa Romero earlier this week that it was her fault for not taking the protective suit off properly.
State broadcaster TVE put out an Ebola special and passed off Reuters images of a spotless German hospital decontamination unit as images from Madridâs Carlos III Hospital. They did not inform viewers of the minor detail, and the German suits and decontamination procedures contrasted strikingly with the images and stories of sticky tape, screen doors, protective suits with sleeves that are too short, Ebola decontamination instructions pinned to makeshift blackboards and 15-minute Ebola training courses that healthcare workers report is Spainâs Ebola response reality this week.
Two El PaĂs journalists managed to wander onto the fifth floor of the Carlos III, without protective suits and without any security guards stopping them.
The prize, though, went to radio station Cadena COPE, which rushed to publish the news of Mrs. Romeroâs death on Thursday evening. Other reporters quickly confirmed this was not the case, and the radio station put out a statement claiming they had not actually published the story, and removed it from their website, before claiming they had been hacked. Inexplicably, the radio station then re-published the same news of her death, a second time.
ABC and El Correo came a close second after running a wire story with the future-tense, certain headline: âTeresa Romero will be cremated without autopsyâ; and continued in the present tense in the body of the text: âthe protocol establishes that she is a group 1 corpseâ.
Right-wing online newspaper Libertad Digital penned a Friday-morning editorial titled âit couldnât get any worseâ, and then beginning Friday lunchtime it did, when the government tried to take control of the situation with three press conferences.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy made a surprise 45 min visit to the Carlos III Hospital to demonstrate leadership in a crisis. He did not do the 15-minute Ebola protective suit training course, try on a suit with short sleeves or visit Mrs. Romero in her isolation room.
At first, journalists were prevented from even witnessing the brief institutional statement without questions that the prime minister was set to make, but were finally let in to record it for posterity. He did not offer any new information and accepted no questions.
âBastards, useless cowardsâ, shouted the nurses watching the press conference, throwing surgical gloves at Mr. Rajoy as he was driven away.
At the same time, Deputy Primer Minister Soraya SĂĄenz de SantamarĂa held her weekly post-cabinet press conference. She is normally accompanied by one or several other ministers, depending on the situation at hand. The Health Minister, Ana Mato, was entirely absent from the Ebola week event.
Mrs. SĂĄenz de SantamarĂa, her voice two tones higher than normal and a stressful week evident, was instead accompanied by the Defence Minister, Pedro MorenĂ©s. They did not announce the Spanish Armyâs specialist NBC units were taking charge, and Mr. MorenĂ©s even said, shockingly, that the Spanish Armed Forceâs capabilities in the matter of infectious diseases were at the same level as the nationâs civilian hospitals.
The Deputy Prime Minister replaced her two-tone, stressed tone with a pained, sad tone of voice to argue that now wasnât the time to talk about political responsibilities and, five days after the start of the crisis, announced the creation of an Ebola crisis committee that she herself would lead, effectively saying the Health Minister was not capable of managing the mess.
Finally, in the evening, Health Minister Ana Mato gave the third government press conference of the day, and even accepted a couple of questions, to her evidently great discomfort, before shuffling off, leaving the attendant journalists with questions half-spoken. She claimed she did not have any more information on the condition of Teresa Romero than that which she read in the newspapers, adding: âItâs not my job to give information on the condition of the patientâ.
The Spain Report wonders if the government realises all of these images and stories of the countryâs botched response get published and commented upon around the world, or if it really cares about the systemic nature of the failures.
Worse, for Spaniards and Spanish healthcare professionals, the description of the underlying reality illustrated by the continuous flow of images and storiesâall from Spanish healthcare workers trying to deal with Ebola in Spainâappears to be increasingly consistent.
At the time of publication, Teresa Romero is still alive and struggling against Ebola on the sixth floor isolation ward of the Carlos III Hospital in Madrid.
Subscribe now:
đ„ Understand the stories changing Spain better
đ Access all the articles & đŹ Substack chat with Matthew
đȘ Guarantee this independent reporting & analysis