Скачать или смотреть Seniors in Solitude : the impact of the pandemic on nursing homes

What happens when you are unable to say goodbye? What should you do when that inevitable farewell, death and subsequent funeral comes in such an inconceivable manner? Our imagined scenarios have been wiped out by COVID-19 in a single blow.

Seniors in Solitude is a photographic tour through nursing homes in Catalonia, carried out accompanying emergency teams from the NGO Open Arms during the first state of alarm declared due to the pandemic.

Nursing homes became one of the tragic focal points in the health crisis caused by the coronavirus in Spain, one of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic, figures top more than 50,000 deaths, according to official data. Half of these deaths correspond to the elderly: in 2020, more than 25,000 died of coronavirus in nursing homes in Spain, mostly isolated and unable to say goodbye to their relatives.

This story take us into nursing homes during the months of March, April and May, when the lack of means of protection, misinformation and fear dominated almost everything. It includes the story of Marita, whose mother died in a nursing home on Easter Sunday, and her frustration at the lack of response from the health authorities, or Igor's effort, who spent more than a month without leaving the nursing home where he worked to avoid introducing the virus. It is the result of a monitoring of the situation in nursing homes to show what was happening there while the country was confined.

These photographs evoke the emotions that were experienced inside nursing homes during the worst weeks of the state of emergency caused by covid-19: loneliness, fear, isolation, fragility, sadness, documenting the most serious consequences of the pandemic: the death of thousands of people. And they do so respecting the privacy of that group that lived through a civil war and the post-war hardships, the Franco regime, the transition to democracy, the arrival of the new century and, now, a pandemic.

Text by Maribel Izcue



Title: Seniors in Solitude
Gender: Documentary
Duration: 7:12 min
Language voice-over: Spanish
Subtitles: English
Direction and Photography: Santi Palacios
Voice-over: Mireia Guilella
Script: Maribel Izcue, Santi Palacios & Eloi Tomàs
Editing: Eloi Tomás
Music: Aritz Villodas
Video: Guillem Trius
Graphic Design: Vikö Sviäs
Production: Temporal Autonomous Zone
Year: 2020

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