Grandstand. The confinement imposed on Spanish society in the context of the fight against Covid-19 disrupts the habits of families with regard to the health system and the care of their loved ones. Health management of the Covid-19 currently prohibits families from accompanying their loved ones to the emergency room and supporting them during hospitalization. Family and health maintain close and indissociable ties in Spanish society.
Fathers, mothers and grandparents hospitalized are now individuals who find themselves alone facing their pathology, and face fear and pain in solitude, without a word, without a message, without a joke or the smile of a close is a new and unprecedented fact in society. This total individualization of the care of a sick person and the global separation between families and the hospital in a country where when “The patient is hospitalized the family is too” (Zomeño Ros, 2015) swear with Spanish customs. Usually, in the case of a hospitalization, the family is omnipresent day and night with the sick except at the time of the toilet, the doctor’s visit in the room or the intervention of the nurses, where it is formally excluded. This family support through the care that the family provides, the expressions of affection that it manifests is precious for the recovery of the patient.
Never alone
There is in this country the societal idea that the individual, within the family, during childhood, youth, old age, at all ages of life and in all circumstances, must always be accompanied, never alone. The thought that physical loneliness contributes to strengthening individuals in their capacity for autonomy, which is considered to be an objective to be conquered, is totally absent. This helps to understand multiple aspects of Spanish society, including the relationship between family and health.
The family is a central actor in the health system, essential and necessary for its proper functioning. In healthcare establishments, it is often requested by professionals. His presence saves them a lot of time and allows them to devote themselves to the most seriously threatened patients or to those (rare) who are isolated, with no one with them. Compared to other European countries more generous in social assistance, we can consider that the Spanish welfare state is family oriented. The health system benefits from this familialism.
The family is involved in the health of its members in various situations. In hospitalized surgery, it is common for family members and friends to stay together and talk about everything in a room during the operation. Thereafter, the doctor informed the family of the progress of the intervention. The first days and as long as the patient suffers, he is accompanied day and night by a member of his family. The family organizes itself to ensure a continuous presence with the patient and manage the problems of daily life generated by his absence, for example the care of his children, etc. Schedules with timetables are set up which mainly concern the members closest to the patient. For example, an elderly person is mainly accompanied by their children. The daughters-in-law and the sons-in-law or the small children intervene more punctually. If the children, too young or living far away, cannot be present and the family can afford it, a person is paid to look after the patient at night. Sometimes friendships are born between carers of patients in the same room or between families of different rooms who cross paths in the corridors.
The bedroom, a place of sociability
In Spanish hospitals, during visiting hours, a crowd of people arrive at the hospital to surround the sick. The rooms become places of gathering sometimes gathering up to ten people around the patient. A patient who receives few visits may “be suspected” of not being sufficiently surrounded or loved by his loved ones. There is an implicit “competition” over the number and quantity of visits. On Sundays and weekends, families gather around the patient as in a living room or a dining room. Often, when there are too many visitors, some will chat in the hallway, others in the rooms dedicated to the floor, others go down for a coffee, thus promoting common and individual moments between each other. The bedroom becomes a place of sociability, of staging illustrating the proper functioning of the family, with its “good” children and loved ones like the friends who accompany them. The number of visitors varies according to the composition of families, social backgrounds and pathology. For a birth, there can be 20 visits per day, for a surgery a dozen.
All of these elements highlight the close links between family and health in Spanish society through the accompaniment of the sick, visits and links with other families of room neighbors. Some people find it difficult to tolerate this new world of confinement: the pain is embodied in this young Madrid woman who, last week, two days after leaving the hospital where she had given birth, and who cannot bear that her parents do not know her baby , went to stand behind the gate of their garden to give him the bottle and change his diaper.
Sandra Gaviria is the author of Return to live with your family, become an adult otherwise, Lormont, editions Le bord de l’eau, 2020.
Sandra Gaviria professor of sociology at Le Havre-Normandie University
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