From the owner of two clinics to living on a grant

On Calle Campomanes in Madrid there are two hotels and a bookstore specializing in texts in several languages. In contrast, at number 10, Fausto Bagno lived his early years. He was born in 1940 A retired doctor and cliché-breaker: He doesn’t have a large pension. In reality, He does not have a pension. Panyu is one of 150 doctors who are being helped by the Social Protection Foundation of the Medical Collective Organization to cover their expenses with economic benefits. in your case, €1,330 “Don’t give too many luxuries.”He explains, but calm enough to live. Even more so when you run out savings who left him, and that he reckons it It will last “two or three more years”.

What happened to a doctor who had always practiced in Spain You do not have a pension and are assisted living? Panyu was born with a nurturing calling: “If a friend fell down when we were kids, I would always come over to help him,” he recalls. He didn’t even give up his efforts He graduated with a medical degree in 1964. At the age of 24, he received a college degree, looking for a specialty. Then there was no MIR.It is clear. “I specialized by subscribing to the hospital service, where I was under the tutelage of the director of this specialty, who encouraged you in this way after two years of training.”. Thus, he studied two disciplines, the first shocks under the direction of Ángel Grizabal; after, rheumatism;. To this he added additional training in acupuncture at the University of Granada and chiropractic at the current hospital 12 October. “I always tried to be as progressive in my patients’ treatments,” he affirms.

It was there that he began his career as a doctor, always out of public health, Where he did not agree to the facilities granted by the state to practice medicine. “king I own two clinics.. first in Leganes, San Cosme Clinicwhere he worked as a doctor of injuries in work accidents, with great activity thanks to The “building boom” in southern Madrid in the early 1970s. The second, after closing the former due to outdated standards and lack of economic sustainability, is in one of the most exclusive areas of Madrid: Diego de León. Transvital Clinic was opened in 1978 He was focusing on rheumatology,” with special treatments that didn’t exist at the time, such as Galvanic baths or carbon dioxide lasers “ which, in Panio’s opinion, transformed his health center “into the best clinic of this kind in Madrid, and one of the most important in Spain”.

That adventure lasted until 1994, he explains The economic crisis has suspended many contracts with insurance companieswhich, according to him, made a business that had been open for 14 years with a staff of five doctors and nurses unsustainable…” At that time, sacking meant working for a month and a half of salary a year and the truth is This compensation left me in the bones”Panyu acknowledges one of his major economic setbacks. This is to deal with the aforementioned cases of dismissal. He had to void his own retirement insurance.

However, this doctor-entrepreneur (as he calls himself) did not stop and embarked on a new adventure in… Lanzarotewhere he transferred his health technology to start a new, active clinic for two years. “I came back to Madrid because my mother was already much older And I sold all the equipment to a doctor there,” he recalls of an operation in which all this equipment, being “used,” lost 75% of its value.

To all of this career path we must add a key fact: until 1995, Doctors were not required to contribute as self-employedAs explained to this method by the sources of the Spanish Medical Syndicate. It was only necessary to register in Tax on Economic Activities (IAE), which means the payment of a rate, and this can already be exercised but, of course, without contributing to a future general pension.

Job instability as a physician

But let’s go back to history, to Madrid. In 1996, political change in Spain, José María Aznar took over from Felipe González in Moncloa, and Banyo made a change (or return) of life. I began to stumble as a contract doctor in various centers in the capitalfrom clinics to nursing homes,” he explains of that time. A time when he achieved some stability in a center until he retired at the age of 74. In fact, he is. Honorary Member of the College of Physicians of Madridas confirmed by this institution.

Since then, the aforementioned Economic benefit from the WTO, those dwindling savings and the sale of the family apartment in Madrid They let him live a life that Panyu admits is mediocre. A fact that doesn’t make him regret anything he’s done: “I don’t know if I would change anything in my life because I have always loved medicine,” he explains. The farewell phrase leaves no room for doubt: “It wasn’t work, it was fun.”