There are forgiveness and rectifications that are ineffective when the damage has already been done and much more so if the error committed is related to the tragic death of a child.
This damage is what the parents of Josep Boan Rosanes, a young Catalan who died three years ago on a road in Galicia, have suffered today.
He was traveling on a motorcycle and a driver jumped on him. This morning these parents received a certified letter from the Provincial Council of A Coruña, in the name of Josep, in which they demanded that this young man pay, half with the driver who killed him, for the road cleaning work.
These parents have been immersed since the irreparable loss of that son - “he was 20 years, 3 months and 21 days,” his mother always answers when asked about Josep's age - in a crusade to demand greater punishment for reckless traffic. His life since that loss is like a roller coaster. This is what Maria Pilar, her mother, confesses when she says that there are worse and better days. But there is not a day that both of them do not remember Josep.
So the “blow” received yesterday by that marriage was very hard, not to mention cruel. His father went to a Post Office to pick up a certified letter addressed to Josep Boan sent from the Provincial Council of A Coruña.
“We thought it could be a notification for the delivery of some personal belongings, since we have not recovered many of the belongings he was carrying on the day of the accident,” says the mother.
Nothing is further from reality. Upon opening that letter, Josep's father was paralyzed. It was an invoice for the cleaning work on the road on which the young motorist died.
A total of 485.50 euros, to be paid equally between Josep, the driver who killed him on the road. An amount to cover the work of 3 hours and 20 minutes, which was how long it took the workers to clean the remains scattered on the road.
A mistake that is difficult to forgive, says Maria Pilar, despite the fact that the Provincial Council of A Coruña has already let some local media in Galicia know that they were going to immediately withdraw that request and that it was all a misunderstanding.
But the truth is that the invoice was issued and sent to Josep Boan's home. Maria Pilar assures that today "no one has sent us an apology from the Galician institutions, although we do know that they would have admitted the blunder." She is going to wait for an official apology and confirm the withdrawal of that collection order, with threat of embargo.
From the Provincial Council of A Coruña - which they now explain to Josep's parents, after the unnecessary pain caused by that letter - they point out that the error would arise from the impossibility of obtaining information about Josep's insurance when sending these invoices. , which they insure, are sent to all those involved in accidents and then it is the insurance companies that determine who must pay them. From that Provincial Council it is assured that the file has already been annulled.
Josep Boan Rosanes died on August 9, 2020 in Dumbría, hit by a car that invaded the opposite lane, in which he was traveling with his motorcycle. On that tour he was accompanied by his father.
María Pilar has increased her particular crusade to demand more severe punishments for traffic accidents after a sentence against the author of her son's death, which she considers insufficient: 2.5 years in prison and 3.5 years of withdrawal of her driving license.
“I refuse to let my son be a number, a fourth-class victim,” repeats Pilar, who started a campaign on Change.org. “Josep will not be able to enjoy the life that his father and I gave him because a driver decided to step on the accelerator and drive at more than 130 km/h on a county road without a shoulder,” she denounces.
Added to the immense pain over the irreparable loss of such a young son is the fact that this reckless driver has not even been to prison “for killing Josep,” the parents remember.
And if that pain was not enough, after the system denied the punishment that they would consider fair, yesterday the lives of those parents sank again with the sending of this bill for cleaning the road on which Josep's life was extinguished. .
