Trinidad: almost 100 years of life - eight of them waiting for home help

The door of the house - a ground floor dwelling in Los Boliches, Fuengirola - is wide open, just as it was before tourism forever changed the urban landscape and the economy of this neighbourhood. From the outside you can see the living room and, in the corner closest to the street, next to a window, is the armchair where Trinidad Cabello sits. A 99-year-old woman who still has enough lucidity, strength and determination to continue to demand that the Junta de Andalucía provide in-home care.

When Trinidad was born, Spain was in the hands of Primo de Rivera; when she first applied for recognition as a dependent person under the Ley de Dependencia, Mariano Rajoy and Susana Díaz were in power in Spain and Andalucía respectively; now with Pedro Sánchez and Juan Manuel Moreno she is still struggling to claim her rights. The Ley de Dependencia involves approval that the person cannot live independently and therefore requires carers in the home. The waiting time for approval is always high, but Trinidad's experience is particularly astounding.

This resident of Los Boliches first applied for recognition as a dependent person in 2017, at the age of 91. In 2021, at 95, she submitted a request for a review, alleging a deterioration. She reiterated her request a year later after having "suddenly" lost the sight in one eye, as well as facing kidney disease and an arthrosis of the knee that forced her to use a walker. But the response from the Junta was always the same: "In view of the legal provisions and others of general application, I resolve not to recognise any situation of dependency."

The response changed in February 2024. By then Trinidad had already lost the sight in her other eye, and the Junta de Andalucía recognised her as dependent and granted her a home care service of four hours a day. Seventeen months later she is still waiting for this to materialise and receives no external help other than that granted by Fuengirola town hall: three hours a week spread over two days.

"I'm as well as I can be at this age, but it seems that we old people don't matter," she said. Trinidad was born in the house she lives in, so she knows it well enough to get around. "But without my sight," she explained, "it's hard for me to go to the toilet and eat because I don't have the ability - it's not the same as when a person is blind from birth".

On the tables on either side of her chair, she has everything she needs to limit her need to move and not have to ask her visitors for anything: water, tissues, the phone.

Trinidad is upset that the town hall changes the woman who does some of her housework "every so often", although she said that she is lucky to have a "big" family: four daughters and 13 grandchildren. Every night one of them stays at home with Trinidad, and during the day one of her daughters brings her food and family visits follow one after the other.

"My daughters come in the morning, but it's hard for them, and the grandchildren work or study and have their own lives," Trinidad explained, and then stated with serenity: "We weren't meant to last so long."

But Trinidad has lasted and is heading towards a century of life, despite the fact that when she was born in 1926, life expectancy in Spain was not even 50 years old. But she continues on with enough courage to demand her rights.