A young man during his compulsary military service suffered a tragice accident during manoeuvres, leaving him in a coma. last month, 27 years later, he died.

He was 19 when the accident happened in Ferrol and spent the rest of his life in a military hospital, with his mother, Milagros – who gave up her job to be there, at his side.

On the fateful day, he had been returning to Madrid in convoy when the vehicle in which he was travelled was involved in and accident – he had to be cut out of he wreck and doctors though he had merely hours to live.

All those long year with her son in a vegetive state (PVE) owing to sever head injuries, she never gave up home, with a determination that only a mother can have for her offspring.

A persistent vegetative state (PVS) or post-coma unresponsiveness (PCU) is a disorder of consciousness in which patients with severe brain damage are in a state of partial arousal rather than true awareness. After four weeks in a vegetative state (VS), the patient is classified as in a persistent vegetative state, which was the case of Manuel.

The case, in a military sense, is curious because he was officially still a conscript soldier on obligatory military service, even though national conscription had ceased in December 2001. He was, then, the last of Spain’s conscript servicemen still in the ranks as such.

(News: Madrid, Spain)