The tension accompanies the visit of a member of the Government to Ceuta again. The Minister of Health, Mónica García, was booed this Sunday by a group of health workers and citizens during her trip to the autonomous city, where professionals have been demanding reinforcements for more than two weeks due to the strong increase in healthcare pressure recorded after the migration crisis of July 30.
Among the slogans heard during the protest were demands for resignation directed at the minister, while several doctors tried to directly convey their complaints to her. García's visit comes after the Medical College and union organizations repeatedly requested her presence to verify the situation of the healthcare system in Ceuta on the ground.
Doctors have been demanding reinforcements for days
The healthcare discontent does not arise solely with the visit this Sunday. The Official College of Physicians of Ceuta had already warned of a situation it considers critical and had requested the urgent sending of professionals from the Peninsula to the Ministry. Its president, Enrique Roviralta, has denounced that the staff has been facing structural problems that are difficult to cover for years, which have considerably worsened after the massive arrival of migrants.
The doctors assure that the increase in demand has forced professionals to double shifts and take on an extraordinary load, especially at the University Hospital of Ceuta. The College has insisted that an emergency response cannot rely solely on workers extending their hours or giving up their breaks.
The problem has an institutional particularity: unlike what happens in the autonomous communities, the healthcare management of Ceuta depends directly on the State through the National Institute of Health Management (INGESA), a circumstance that has led professionals to direct a good part of their demands directly to the Ministry of Health.
Health rejects talking about "collapse"
The assessment of the Government and that of some healthcare professionals has clashed in recent days. While doctors and political representatives have used the term “collapse” to describe the healthcare situation, the Secretary of State for Health, Javier Padilla, has rejected that there is a health crisis and has defended that it is fundamentally a humanitarian crisis derived from the massive influx and the conditions in which thousands of people remain.
INGESA has also denied that the University Hospital is formally collapsed, although doctors maintain that the pressure on Emergency Services and the exhaustion of staff reflect a much more complicated reality.
The discrepancy has fueled the confrontation. The Medical Association has demanded that reinforcements be external and effective, and not limited to reorganizing staff that they already consider insufficient before the emergency began.
García visits Ceuta after criticism for her absence
The minister had scheduled an agenda for this Sunday that includes meetings with the Government delegate, INGESA officials, and the president of Ceuta, Juan Jesús Vivas, in addition to visits to the Otero Health Center and the University Hospital and meetings with medical, labor, and social organization representatives.
Her arrival comes after the Medical Association sent a request on August 7 for her to urgently travel to the city in light of what it described as unprecedented healthcare pressure.
The healthcare professionals had also intensified their criticism after officials from the Ministry rejected talking about collapse. For the professionals, the situation after July 30 has added to problems that already existed previously, such as the difficulty in filling medical positions, the lack of specialists, and the referrals of patients to the Peninsula. The Medical Union of Ceuta had, in fact, been demanding García's resignation since April for what it considers a structural deterioration of the healthcare system in Ceuta and Melilla.
The PP also demands the minister's resignation
The protests this Sunday coincide with a new political offensive from the Partido Popular. The Deputy Secretary of Autonomous and Local Coordination of the PP, Elías Bendodo, has demanded García's resignation and has held her responsible for the alleged “healthcare collapse” of the city.
Bendodo assures that the Ceuta Emergency Services have managed to attend to about 500 people daily, five times more than usual, and accuses the Executive of having reacted late to an exceptional situation. These figures are part of the political complaint of the PP and contrast with the position of Health, which maintains that the care activity has decreased since the peaks recorded after the massive entry.
Three days after the boos at Marlaska
The protest against Mónica García reproduces a scene experienced just a few days earlier. Last Thursday, August 13, the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, was received in Ceuta with whistles, boos, and shouts of "Government, resignation" upon his arrival at the Government Delegation. About fifty people gathered then to protest the management of the migration crisis.
The visit of the Minister of Health shows that the discontent has now also moved to the care field. More than two weeks after the massive entry on July 30, the management of its consequences continues to generate a strong confrontation between the Government and various Ceuta groups, while doctors and unions demand that the extraordinary reinforcements be maintained and not fall solely on the existing staff.
The protest this Sunday thus adds pressure on Mónica García during a visit precisely designed to directly understand the situation of local health care. Health workers want that visit to translate now into more personnel and concrete measures, after weeks of denouncing that the problem is not limited to the temporary increase in patients, but has occurred over a system that, they claim, already had significant shortcomings before the crisis.