« We have nothing to hide »: This way this medical legal protection obtained against the reprisals of their bosses | Spain

« We are not who we have things to hide, » said Dr. Sílvia López Coll a recent morning in a cafeteria in Santa Coloma de Gramanet, Barcelona, ​​while outside Jarreaba as if she hadn’t rained in centuries. He talked about her and the six resident doctors of the Hospital Esperit Sant (Fhes) Foundation that months ago denounced the alleged power abuses of the then Chief of Emergency. The residents asked for help and she alerted the hospital address; now, with the condition of « protected person » that the Informants Law He foresees for those who warn of alleged irregularities both in the public and private sector, López Coll denounces the reaction of managers. « What were some cases of alleged abuses have become attitudes, facts and irregularities that I had only seen in Al Pacino’s films, » he said in reference to the interpreter of the mafia chief of the corleone in the saga of The godfather.

The Espeit Santit Foundation (Holy Spirit, in Catalan) is a private hospital in concert with the public system with more than 100 years of history and more than 900 workers, according to their Memory of activity of 2023. It is the reference hospital for more than 200,000 people in the north of the Metropolitan Area of ​​Barcelona: Santa Coloma, Sant Adrià and Badalona. Governed by a Board of Trustees designated by the City Council of Santa Coloma, the Generalitat and the Archbishopric of Barcelona, ​​both its manager, Vicenç Perelló, and its director of Human Resources, Josep Vidal, have commanded the management against the complaints. When after a meeting, the complainant saw that the complaint was going to return against her, she went to the Anti -Fraud office, which articulates the Informants Law In Catalonia , And on March 21 they recognized him as a « protected person, » according to the resolution. A legal shield in front of the reprisals of their bosses for two years.

Dr. López Coll has been working in the FOS for 25 years. Teachers’ daughter, she does not have a great union past or a marked profile of collective struggles behind her. He has a vocation for which he shows. « Helping the people who suffer is my vocation, it is my profession. How am I not going to help some companions who seem to suffer very serious things, » he says about the residents with whom, since last September, he is articulating an answer that repairs them and that, above all, avoids that the alleged abuses are repeated. The residents have denounced arbitrariness, defamations and threats of Dr. Carlos Palacio, who had been a doctor of the Government of Mauricio Macri in the Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires and who in five years in the TEFS accumulated the positions of Chief of Emergency and residents. A last July night, a resident had an anxiety attack during a guard and palace opened a patient card against his will, activated the « suicide code » and, after two attempts, managed to derive it to psychiatric emergencies of another hospital, where he was discharged as soon as he arrived. Palacio has not attended to this newspaper.

Palacio resigned on January 31, According to the country. Among the first complaints and the resignation of the Argentine doctor, however, the hospital direction went from the apparent involvement – « from the first meeting I left very happy, » recalls López Coll – to the reprisals against the alert. After false closing an open file against Palace for its controversial performance against the resident, and when it still seemed that “some ladies were not going to throw an excellent professional”, according to the phrase attributed to the manager and printed on posters by the hospital, the manager and the human resources director “threatened” with a file to López Coll during a meeting with union representatives. « (The managers) are very concerned with the name of the hospital, but I think you have to defend it in another way, not killing the messenger, » union sources told this newspaper after the meeting. The hospital spokeswoman has declined to respond to anything: « We will not make statements, » he said.

The reaction of the managers surprised López Coll not so much for the result of the alleged investigations, as for his personal methods of action: the file against the emergency chief that Vidal instructed contains key falsehoods that distract the verification of the facts; And Perelló offered money to one of the resident doctors On condition that he resigned to know who had accessed his clinical history, something that the resident claimed after having proven through the application of the Catalan health system that had accessed their history without apparent medical justification. The Catalan Data Protection Authority and the Anti -Fraud Office of Catalonia are investigating these facts, According to the country.

Legal shield

« The reaction of management is unpredictable, you can never know what it will do, but the resolution gives me some peace of mind, » said López Coll that rainy morning in Santa Coloma. It is one of the first to obtain this year the recognition of “protected person” in Catalonia under the umbrella of Law 2/2023, which transposed a European directive. However, at the national level the application of the law is almost as slow as its approval, finalized one day after the European Commission denounced Spain for the delay. More than two years later, the Congress has appointed Professor Manuel Villoria this month to preside over the Independent Authority for the Protection of the Informant, which must still materialize.

In coordination with said independent authority, the law provides for regional organizations such as the Anti -Fraud Office of Catalonia (OAC) to function as a channel to receive and investigate complaints and protect the complainants. There are other regional agencies already underway. « Catalonia, Andalusia and Valencia are the ones that work best, » says the lawyer Santiago Torres, who as a judge had a prominent role in the fight against corruption, an experience that now applies as an advisor to some countries in the creation of these agencies.

The condition of « protected person » also notifies the companies or administrations reported. In 2024, in Catalonia it was obtained by 17 complainants. The Valencian agency has 36 people with this current condition, although only 4 requested it in the last year, under the new law. In Andalusia, there are 14. None of the three agencies have had to use its sanctioning power against any of the entities warned. With the new law, protection, in addition to a shield against reprisals and legal advice, includes psychological help for complainants.

But why was this new figure necessary, if anyone can go to the police or the court to denounce? The new law creates a space prior to the traditional judicial investigation in which alerters also have new rights. « Right to the protection of your identity, protection against work reprisals and in the face of the responsibilities that could incur, for example, when an alert has signed a confidentiality clause, » says Beatriz García-Moreno, professor of Criminal Law at the University of Castilla-La Mancha and author of the book Of Whistleblower to the alert (Marcial Pons, 2020). The law leaves any « confidentiality clauses » that « prevent or pretend to limit the right or the ability to inform », According to the legal text.

But neither the directive nor the law get as far as they promised. « They make a threat of exempting any responsibility, although then the law says that it does not exempt from criminal responsibilities, » says Professor García-Moreno. « There should be a much broader acquittal excuse, so that those even who have participated in some facts can denounce them to frustrate the crime, » defends former Magistrate Torres. In his opinion, the solution does not happen so much « to guarantee the complainant his anonymity, as for establishing a series of guarantees for which these people do not fear that they are known that they are the complainants, » he adds.

In the case of the form, when the residents requested to recover the audios and writings of their own complaints with a view to undertaking legal actions outside the hospital, those responsible for the FIs alleged said confidentiality to refuse them, according to the communications read by this newspaper. The forensic psychologist hired by the hospital to instruct six harassment protocols, Eva García Calderón, has declined to answer the questions of this newspaper, not even those that did not refer to anyone’s identity, for « confidentiality commitment, » he said on the phone. The six actions (five for alleged psychological harassment and one, sexual) were closed with listed reports, without description of the facts or their circumstances, and the same formula: « There is no evidence of harassment. »

THE CANAL OF JOURNALISM

Instead of « confidentiality », those responsible for the Hold Sant used another word to maintain the case inside the house: « pond », according to several communications. Faced with pond, they called the media. A resident contacted a Catalan newspaper, who requested that they first denounced the police or court. To this newspaper, López Coll came looking for « external help. » The Law and the Directive indicate research journalism as a third external channel (after the institution itself and the protection agencies) to which the informants can go.

It is not the first time that hospital workers denounce undue access to their clinical records by services responsible, according to documents seen by this newspaper. But the first time the complaints overflow the hospital walls. “I believe that the majority of the hospital workers could not think that we were managed by someone like that. And I trust that the Board of Trustees will act. Disregeted, and not only from the hospital, but of the city, it is enormous. It is incredible that someone who is managing public money is doing what he supposedly does. It is no longer adequately investigating some cases of harassment, psychological and sexual, but everything that is generated around those cases: Alleged bribes, threats of expulsion to workers, cruelty to residents, foster defamation, ”concludes López Coll.

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