A list and 22 names separated by a line. And a title, in bold capital letters and underlined in yellow: “NEW CENTERS”. On February 14, 2020 at 9:53 am Isabel Díaz Ayuso He posted a photo on his Twitter account., accompanied by a short message. “The 22 new health centers of the Autonomous Community of Madrid will be located here.” Then the networks were filled with replies accusing the president of propaganda because 14 of them had already been announced in previous parliamentary terms, some even more than a decade ago. Almost three years later and four months after the election, the post is circulating again: none of the promised ambulances have yet been inaugurated.
The list could be divided into four categories: centers already built but not operational; those who have already awarded a construction contract; those to be tendered in 2023; and those that are not yet a project. According to the community budgets, only one of the clinics is almost ready for this year, the Navalcarnero II. In the municipality of Madrid, 33 kilometers from the capital and with 31,379 inhabitants, there is already a health center, built in 1985, but the commitment for one new ones first came in 2003. Three years later, then-Health Minister Manuel Lamela said he was involved in laying the foundation stone for the building. The only one that existed until the construction contract was awarded to Tableros y Puentes SA in November 2020 for 2,668,535.84 euros. The center’s name doesn’t even show up on Google except when preceded by the word future.
According to a Health Ministry spokesman, “The delays that may have occurred are due to the fact that three years of the pandemic have passed since February 2020.” It also notes that six new health centers have opened in the region since 2019 – without confirming whether any of them are on the list published by Ayuso – that another four are due to open and that six and one more are in the pipeline 11 You will bid this year.
The list includes two other clinics that are also being built and fall under the “expected completion of works” category for 2023, although no date is given in the budgets. These are Parque Oeste in Alcorcón and Las Tablas in the Fuencarral-El Pardo neighborhood. The latter was already included in the plan to improve the primary supply network between 2015 and 2019, and in March this year the Autonomous Community of Madrid approved a budget of 10.1 million euros for the construction from the company Tragsa. Although the investment that appears in the note published in December 2022 for this center is 5.8 million. A little over two months ago, the Las Tablas neighborhood association wrote to ask for an urgent meeting with the head of primary care. “We are asking for information on the completion and commissioning of the health center, 40 months and still under construction,” he wrote on social media.
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Ángela Hernández, general secretary of Amyts, points out over the phone that the lack of health centers is another factor for the union to take action to improve basic services in Madrid: “Setting expectations but not meeting them is something that must be explained to the Government of the Autonomous Community of Madrid, and it would be desirable that a firm commitment is made to comply with it and not just proclaim it”. Hernández explains that if these clinics were “a reality,” the possibility of reducing the nursing backlog in extra shifts would be “more credible.” “At the moment, in some centers it is not possible, whether there are volunteers from the shortage categories or not, to carry it out due to space constraints,” he adds.
Works in the next four on the list – Montecarmelo, Barrio Hospital-Fuenlabrada, Residencial Este Parla and Butarque, where residents have been waiting for a center for almost 15 years – are budgeted for 2023, a €34.6 million item for Health infrastructures in primary care. The work contract for all was awarded between May and November last year, the total investment amounts to 26.5 million euros (amount obtained according to the sum of the tender budgets for each clinic, detailed on the public procurement portal of the Autonomous Community of Madrid) . According to the notice released by the regional government, the final investment is much lower: 15.2 million.
“The plot [del centro de Butarque] It has been on loan since 2009. More than 15 years have passed since the first commitment. It’s a shame that we’re going to continue like this,” criticized the president of the neighborhood association based in the Villaverde district on the phone. Almost 21,000 people live in the area, according to the city government’s statistics portal, and many have to go to the Los Rosales Ambulance, a half-hour walk away, with a medical problem. “It’s very saturated, especially in pediatrics, because this neighborhood is newly built and there are a lot of children. We’ve been like this for years and in a pandemic it was crazy, ”says the neighbor. A few weeks ago the association announced mobilizations to demand the start of construction – they had been organizing them for years – and days later the Autonomous Community of Madrid put up the start of construction sign.
The remaining 13 ambulances are pending approval of the tender “PAU4 Móstoles, Valdemoro III, Campo de Tiro (Leganés), Pinto II and Dehesa Vieja (San Sebastián de los Reyes)” or do not even have the previous project and study as in Case of the centers Barrio de la Luna (Rivas), Ensanche Sur-Alcorcón, El Cañaveral, Ensanche de Vallecas II, Valdebebas, Valderribas, Soto del Henares (Torrejón de Ardoz) and Cerro de los Gamos (Pozuelo) . There are only two clinics that do not appear in the budgets, the Simancas and the Méndez Álvaro, both of which have been promised more than once.
Among the replies to Ayuso’s announcement on Twitter, one of the residents of Ensanche de Vallecas posted a photo of the empty lot where the future health center is to be built. He posted it on January 31 at 11:06 am. Four and a half hours later, he uploaded a second photo to the social network. This time the Autonomous Community of Madrid had placed a “next construction” sign on the fence surrounding the property with the estimated budget for the tender and the construction time: 8,268,764.40 euros and 18 months. “A few hours after my tweet, they put this sign on the property. It seems he was prepared. They have the small shame to give an “estimated” budget. This means that it is neither advertised nor budgeted. Isabel Díaz Ayuso begins campaigning,” the user wrote.
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