Linguistic discrimination at the Miramar Polyclinic: A patient is accused of being "racist" for speaking in Catalan

PalmaNew case of linguistic discrimination at a hospital center in the Balearic Islands. On this occasion, the Policlínica Miramar has been the scene of a new episode of violation of patients' linguistic rights, accompanied, even, by threats.

The events took place when the patient went to the Emergency department due to respiratory problems and fever. When they called him and he entered the consultation room, he began to explain what was happening to him to the doctor in Catalan, and the healthcare worker interrupted him, demanding that he speak to him in Spanish. The patient, at that moment, reminded him that he had the right to speak to him in Catalan and even, as the man explained to ARA Balears, "I offered to speak more slowly and translate the words he didn't understand for him". Nevertheless, his response was as clear as it was forceful and threatening: "If you do not speak to me in Spanish, I will put in your medical record that you are a racist person and it will remain on record forever".

Faced with the threat, the patient replied that "speaking my language in my land is not an act of racism". Faced with the doctor's attitude and refusal, the patient decided to leave the consultation room, even though his physical problems had not even been heard. "I did not want to debate anything with him because it was not the appropriate place, given that I only went there to cure an illness. Furthermore, I saw that, from the moment I entered, he had already made his decision and would not agree to any other way of communicating", he explains.

The man filed a complaint where he explained the whole case to the hospital management. Days after the complaint, and despite the seriousness of the aggression and the fact that the patient had to leave the hospital center without being attended to, the management of the Policlínica Miramar has still not contacted the patient.