Jon García, 69, has a photo of a monument with flowers on his WhatsApp. Jon is the spokesperson for Fedavica (State Federation of Asbestos Victim Associations). This entity denounces that more than 20 years after the total prohibition of asbestos in Spain, those affected by this construction material, widely used as it is carcinogenic, remain without protection, forced to a tortuous legal path.
Asbestos or asbestos (from the Greek incorruptible, inextinguishable) was also widely used in railway and shipping companies. “Five colleagues from a section of 50 have died of cancer,” laments Jon García. The mobile photo is of the sculpture erected by those affected next to the Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF) factory in the Gipuzkoan town of Beasain, where he worked (and before his father and his grandfather).
In reality, restrictions on the use of asbestos began almost 40 years ago. In 1984 the Government began to put vetoes on its commercialization. In 1989 and in 1993 new limitations were imposed. And so until 2001, when it was finally banned. There are no official figures on the deaths caused by this material, which was already widely used in Spain in the 19th century and which lived its golden age between 1960 and 1984.
Some 4,582 people (92% men) die each year from this cause in our country, according to some estimates from the National Institute of Statistics. The figures could be higher, warns Fedavica. The damages of asbestos are undoubted. It is the cause, for example, of asbestosis, lung cancer and pleural mesothelioma (when cancer cells invade the pleura, the membrane that surrounds the lungs).
But these ailments can take between 20 and 40 years to hatch. “Many victims have died from asbestos and don't know it,” says Jon García. The others, he adds, have no choice but to start a complex legal pilgrimage, a difficult path with no guaranteed favorable results. Justice has opened doors to workers from the Navantia shipbuilding company in Ferrol, which has closed its colleagues from Cartagena.
And, even when the sentences are favourable, the amount of compensation is left to the discretion of the judges, who can set different amounts for almost identical events. This is demonstrated by four of the latest judgments of which there is evidence, issued between April 2020 and June 13 by the social court number 2 of Bilbao and the Superior Courts of Justice of the Basque Country and Catalonia.
The amounts stipulated in these four cases range from 214,327 to 350,070 euros for each victim of pleural mesothelioma. Where there is unanimity is among chemists and biologists. According to a diagnosis commissioned by the Ministry of Labor to the experts Asunción Freixa, Joan de Montserrat and Jordi Colomer, "avoiding exposure to asbestos is the only preventive measure to avoid diseases".
Catalonia had 310 asbestos construction companies. In the Basque Country there are frequent obituaries such as that of José Félix, 63, "victim of asbestos", published by El Diario Vasco on May 22, 2019. Both communities are two of the most punished. Precisely the Basque Parliament considered in 2013 the creation of a compensation fund for those affected and took the idea to Congress in 2016.
After many postponements and interruptions, Law 21/2022 approved the creation of the fund and this is stated in the BOE of October 19, 2022. But the compensation remains stagnant because, as the royal decree that must regulate the law says, "both the amount of the compensations as well as the requirements to obtain them, as well as the procedure to recognize them, remain pending their regulatory development”.
That is to say, the fund already has a green light, but it is subject to a regulation forgotten in a drawer, although it should have been applied at the beginning of this year. The compensation "will be received only once for full reparation of damages." Those who have already successfully gone to court will not receive anything if their compensation is higher than the law, "which is not difficult because the expected ones are very low."
But the point that arouses the main criticism is that of the single payment. The State Federation of Associations of Victims of Asbestos denounces, with the support of the CC.OO. and UGT, that exposure to this product "can cause various pathologies of different severity and that can appear in a spaced manner." It is possible, these sources add, that a person is first diagnosed with asbestosis and...
And that same person later develops cancer. What will happen in such situations with the single payment principle? The majority unions and the main platform of those affected denounce that the text “is discriminatory”. In particular, for victims who are initially detected with a pathology for which a smaller amount corresponds and who later see their case worsen without further aid.
The objective of the fund, these sources add, should be to replace the cumbersome judicial processes "that drag on for years and on too many occasions conclude when the claimant has already died." But that will not be achieved because the amounts established "do not come close to the compensation set by the judges." The criteria of the courts can vary, but when they have ruled in favor of the victims they have been more generous.
The royal decree provides compensation of 68,399 euros for those affected by mesothelioma, 57,719 for lung cancer, 41,039 for laryngeal cancer and 27,359 for asbestosis. These amounts are far from those obtained by, among others, those affected by thalidomide, who can receive amounts that triple those proposed for asbestos victims. And what is the main problem?
One of the main ones, explains a spokesperson for the Colectivo Ronda lawyers' cooperative in Barcelona, is that "asbestos is still with us, for example, with countless kilometers of fiber cement pipes, made with this material." The next affected will be those affected by the environment, people who have not worked in the asbestos industry, but have been exposed to its consequences.
The Ronda Collective achieved an important judicial milestone in March 2021, when it managed to get the Supreme Court to sentence Uralita to compensate, not only workers or family members of workers at its factory in Cerdanyola del Vallès, but also -and for the first time- neighbors of this Barcelonan town. The company, which carried out its activity between 1907 and 1997, no longer exists and the sentence is pending execution.
"That is why the removal of asbestos from our companies and the unblocking of the compensation fund regulations is so important," insists Jon García, now retired and a member of the sector of ex-workers exposed and under surveillance. Every two years he undergoes controls to verify that everything is still in order. And we are not the only ones affected. The environmental ones remain, like those of Cerdanyola ”, he recalls.
