On the 14th of July, 2016, Víctor Cabrera had an accident in Motril municipal pool and ended up in a vegetive state and the parents have spent all they have to care for him.

His parents, Francisco y Mari Carmen, know that he will never come out of the coma but they cannot let him go; such a decision is something most of us will never have to confront. When the accident took place, Victor was 29 and has two children.

During this time the family took on a legal battle with the Town Hall for compensation resulting recently in the Andalusian Supreme Court concluding in their favour. Consequently, Motril Town Hall has to pay a million euros in compensation. It will also have to pay the legal costs which amount to 140,000 euros.

This means that the victim’s parents will have the funds to continue caring for their son and even take a rest by hiring home help. They have been caring for his needs 24/7 since the accident. The father left his job in order to look after him, which left them in a precarious financial state. Not only have they had to spend all their savings, but they also had to sell their house.

The court sentence is also a relief for an NGO (Proyecto Hombre which caters for drug dependency) who in the court of first instance made them responsible for the accident. Victor was at the pool that day thanks to an accord with the NGO that permitted its members to use the pool. The judge in this first-instance court found that the NGO should pay out 684,000 euros in compensation. The High Court threw this out and bumped the compensation to the 1,000,000 mark because they considered that the safety of the pool was entirely the Town Hall’s responsibility.

The Town Hall is now contemplating whether to except this court decision, or take it higher to the Tribunal Superior de España. As it stands it’s the insurance company that the Town Hall uses that will have to find the one million but it remains to be seen who will have to pay for the legal costs.

(News: Motril, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)