The Intensive Care Unit of Can Misses Hospital. VICENT MARÍ.
A few weeks ago, the linguistic debate on the use of Catalan in public administrations was reopened after a doctor allegedly refused to attend to a user because she spoke Catalan. The incident occurred at the Son Pisà Health Centre in Palma when a doctor at the centre asked the patient to express herself in Spanish as she could not understand her.
This is not the only case in the last year. In Campos, a patient who had cut his hand explained to a nurse in Mallorcan what was happening to him, but the nurse told him that she did not understand him.
The Son Pisà complaint caused a stir within the Govern and even Més forced a crisis meeting of the Pact that resulted in the opening of proceedings in this case and better coordination between Política Lingüística and the IB-Salut. This complaint provoked graffiti on the façade of the centre including a Catalan pro-independence flag and “Prou d’Agressions Lingüístiques”, signed by the secessionist organisation Endavant Mallorca.
In the end, IB-Salut began a process of gathering information about what happened and, as explained by the Govern’s Department of Health, it was concluded that the doctor “provided the patient with an adequate consultation from a health point of view. The two parties understood each other at all times and proof of this was that the patient left the consultation with a prescription for the appropriate treatment for the ailment and an appointment booked for a follow-up with her GP”.
The Health Department decided not to file a case against the doctor at Son Pisà, stating that it would lead to a situation where “a patient was refused care due to language issues”, which had not occurred. However, the day after Consellera Patricia Gomez’s statements, the president of the Govern, Francina Armengol, denied the closure of the information file by IB-Salut and declared that “it is still open and information is being collected” as “any citizen of the Balearic Islands has the right to be treated in one of the two official languages, Catalan and Castilian Spanish”.
Both cases of alleged linguistic discrimination have reopened the debate. Should a doctor understand Catalan? Here is what the law says.
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.