Juan Antonio Lara Garrido is a 58-year-old general who specialized in pediatrics before entering the Army. Close to six feet nine, director of the Hospital de la Defensa in Zaragoza, he moves quickly through the downtown wards and talks non-stop. Determined and eager, he greets everyone who comes across, and raises his voice to try to exchange jokes with the inhabitants who have been residing for months in the northern area of the third floor of his hospital. There, one appears who is missing a leg; another, in a military shirt, walks with the stump of his right arm in the air; The one beyond him looks at his cell phone with his left hand, in his right he still has metal fixators to hold the broken bone. A screen separates the Ukrainian patients who have been treated in this hospital for months from the rest. "Welcome to Ukraine," Lara jokes as we enter the zone of those wounded in Vladimir Putin's war.
For Juan Antonio, the language barrier with the Ukrainians does not seem to be a problem and he has spent several months adapting his hospital facilities so that the 53 patients who have been treated so far in his hospital receive the best care. "They give me a list of wounded and I select with the head of traumatology [Lieutenant Colonel Sevilla] who we treat here, the easy thing is to bring a broken femur, a gunshot wound," he explains. However, they have opted for more complicated patients, those hit by the shock wave of an explosion, soldiers who are missing several limbs and whose work to extract the shrapnel is "more difficult than someone who has been shot clean."
At one point, the hospital director shows a photo on his mobile phone. He is a soldier named Denis whose face was disfigured by an explosion and split in half. In Spain they reconstructed it with maxillofacial surgery and now he is at the front again. "Spanish doctors have golden hands," he sums up from a distance.
Each one of the patients that comes is a challenge for the entire medical team of the hospital that, without extra remuneration in return, has placed themselves under the orders of these soldiers. Upon arrival, they undergo a review with ENT and ophthalmologists to see how their hearing is due to the explosion and if there are shrapnel or vision injuries. They are then evaluated by the maxillofacial and plastic surgeon. A visit to the traumatologist is essential, and no one gets rid of operations. "The first thing to do is to break the bone again, they are patients who underwent an emergency cure and stabilized them, the injury has been like this for a month and has solidified," they explain. Afterwards, a stress test with the cardiologist, measurements for some prostheses and the rehabilitator.
But to get to that point, the treatment takes months. Andrii walks in the pool of the rehabilitation physiotherapy room holding on to some handholds. He became a fighter pilot because since he was little he liked airplanes: "The only way to fly for free was to join the Army, on top of that they pay me to fly," he jokes. On February 27, 2022, while launching missiles at the Russians near Kherson, he was intercepted by the enemy and had to eject at a low altitude, insufficient for his parachute to fully open. He fell bad. He broke T12, the most characteristic injury of an ejection, but also both ankles. He couldn't move and the Russians captured him. His broken bones found a Crimean hospital. "My injuries saved me from torture," he says. He also thinks that "the doctors at the hospital were pro-Ukrainian and that's why they didn't let them do anything to me."
He was returned to Ukraine in a prisoner exchange and spent a month in the Lviv military hospital. On May 19, he arrived in Spain, where he has been living for ten months. Now, thanks to the efforts of the hospital director, his girlfriend accompanies him to the apartment where they live in Zaragoza. They want to get married in kyiv, although the general does not lose hope that they will do it in front of the Virgen del Pilar. While Andrii is in the pool, at the other end of the rehabilitation room Igor trains his new left arm. A railwayman in another life, at 57 his tenacity has allowed him to rehabilitate quickly. He lost his arm in an attack in Donetsk, when a car exploded with Russian missiles in his path. On October 1, he arrived in Spain with a challenge for the doctors, since his stump is very small and makes it difficult to install his biomechanical arm. In Spain, external myoelectric prostheses that work with stimuli are placed, and patients receive two physiotherapy sessions a day so that they can recover as soon as possible. Igor is fit, doing one-armed push-ups and is already able to send small signals to his left hand.
His case has been more complex than that of Oleksander, who arrived in Zaragoza on February 21 along with 13 other patients and his best friend. This paramedic, who spent three months in his Donetsk position treating wounded soldiers on the front lines of the war, was hit by a missile on August 28. "I remember a ball with fire, a yellow ball that came to me," he confesses. From that moment on, unconsciousness and a journey first by car to a hospital and then from center to center until he arrived in Spain just a week ago. Widowed since 2018, he enlisted to alleviate the pain of the death of his wife and in front of him he found love again. After having lost four fingers on his right hand and both legs, he is waiting for his girlfriend to travel to Zaragoza to be together in the months of recovery that lie ahead. On Thursday, the chief of cardiology, Captain Miguel Martínez, performed a pharmacological stress electrocardiogram on him to certify that he was suitable for the prosthesis. "I've already gotten used to not having legs, and I have to continue living to be useful to my land," he affirms with open green eyes that are empty.
Parallel to the work of doctors, there is that of nurses and physiotherapists. But from the first day they arrive in Spain, the psychiatry and psychology team works with the patients. "The first thing they need is medication to calm the pain and help to sleep, they have many nightmares," explains the head of psychiatry, Araceli Gámez, before passing the floor. Patients have post-traumatic stress that is not helped by technology, which makes them connected to the war almost in real time. "They are here without their family that they can kill," she analyzes. The lieutenant colonel wants to start a project with virtual reality glasses and a group therapy project to help them.
From the headboard of Vladyslav's bed hangs a drawing that his five-year-old daughter has painted. They called him to the front because he had just finished his military service and on May 8 he was killed in combat. He is apparently fine, but a scar runs all over his right arm, deformed and useless. The same is true of his namesake and roommate, who was attacked on July 24. The third inhabitant of his room, Petro, still has the fracture fixator that was placed on him on December 1. "We have seen all kinds of fixators, straight, curved, with irons that made eses," describes the general. The three of them arrived on the last flight and are waiting for their operation.
The Military Hospital does not have capable specialists to do what the two Vladyslavs need: place a nerve in the leg and a piece of the hip in the arm to recover it again. Once a month, a guardian angel from a hospital in another community, which they ask not to reveal so as not to generate controversy, goes to Zaragoza on his weekend payroll, they close an operating room and perform these reconstructions for the soldiers. He also reveals that he wants to contact Pedro Cavadas to see if he can take care of a patient who is in the Ukraine and who needs a total facial reconstruction.
From the computer in his office, he studies each of the cases on the list provided by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. Hemiplegics cannot bring them and "easy" wounds are ruled out. He is looking for patients to help and aware that they will spend about half a year in the hospital. For this reason, he spoke with Defense, worked on a report and has managed to sign a temporary program for war wounded. Thus, in order to dedicate himself to them without congesting his hospital, they have reinforced the service with five doctors, six nurses, the same nursing assistants, two orderlies and two physios. A team that allows, for example, that the rehabilitation room is open two shifts and all the patients -Ukrainians and Spanish- benefit from it.
In an empty room, as a set, they have displayed a Ukrainian flag that occupies an entire wall. They summon six patients from the south zone of the second floor, where the mutilated are located, to take a photo. Six injured come to Alina's call, she, an interpreter and head of the Ukrainian Association of Residents in Aragon (A.U.R.A), has been providing altruistic and indispensable help for a year. After passing a CNI screening to certify that she had no ties to Russia, they authorized her help, which seemed punctual but is now an unpaid job.
Upon arrival at the hospital, the requests of the patients begin, who have a WhatsApp group with Alina that works 24 hours a day. Although there are other volunteers who work as interpreters, she is the head of all. Not only does she help them here, but she travels on the Spanish A-400 plane that brings the sick from Poland. And she helps with the arrangements so that family members can also come. She seems like nothing gets ahead of her.
She has already sent twenty trucks with help and while she is talking to us she is interrupted by one of the hospital electricians to comment, for example, on a piece that they have requested for the drones. She is very aware that a 500-euro generator can give light to a family. She seeks help and also maintains contact with the patients who, once discharged, return to Ukraine. And she needs donations.
Alina then summons several patients in the room with the Ukrainian flag. There are six newcomers. Petro fought at Kherson and on September 5 he lost his left arm at the front. He has no family, just a brother who is also at the front. Volodymir, a veterinarian, enlisted because he has medical knowledge from his work. Helping a colleague, he stepped on an antipersonnel mine and lost his left foot. In the next chair, a man in a black sweatshirt doesn't have an arm either and he looks at everyone seriously.
Their stories are one of many that go through the hospital. Lara already has four or five high earrings to be able to bring more. The lieutenant colonel hopes that the war wounded aid program will continue for three years, and he will help as many as he can. It depends on him, for example, whether the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense continues to pay them. On March 2, the day this report was made, a nurse handed out papers justifying that they were still in the hospital, the way to prove that they had not deserted. And after discharge? "I belong to the Spanish Medical Court that decides the casualties of Spanish soldiers, but in the war, almost everyone is fit for the front again." Thus, Andrii only wants to get married and return to piloting a fighter.
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