A businessman abandons an undocumented employee in a Mataró hospital after he has an accident – “Take off your work clothes; otherwise, you’ll screw us all over,” he told him.

"I started work at seven in the morning, as usual, and began making some protectors for a ship's exhaust pipe. I was running one of the pieces through the lathe when my hand got caught. It happened in a flash, without me even realizing it. 'I've lost my hand!' I yelled to my coworker. I called the boss and he handed me the phone. 'Are you badly hurt?' he asked. 'Badly,' I said. He told me I had to go to the hospital. 'But first you have to take off your work clothes. Otherwise, you'll screw us all over.'"

Between sobs, and distressed at having to relive an episode that keeps him awake at night, Jan, 41, born in Ecuador, recounted yesterday over the phone how he lost his left hand in a workplace accident in Vilassar de Mar (Barcelona) on January 12th. He was working on a three-roller machine that bends pieces when his hand got caught and the machine crushed it. He had been without a contract for a year and a half because his work permit had expired. Before that, he had worked for three years with the required social security registration. The owner of the workshop is free pending a court summons.

"I don't want to talk about anything. It's all in the courts and I prefer to consult with my lawyers first," excused Jaume Comas yesterday, owner of the company CMN, where JAN worked and which is dedicated to the manufacture of nautical accessories.

The Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) arrested Comas and a company supervisor for concealing the fact that the man was employed illegally when he suffered the accident. The businessman is accused of crimes against workers, failure to provide assistance, and obstruction of justice. The supervisor is accused of failure to provide assistance and concealment. Both are free pending a court summons.

“I listened to the bosses. I cut my sweater with scissors, helped by my coworker. On the way to the hospital they told me: ‘When they ask you how you did it, say it was on the breakwater.’ But I didn’t know what the breakwater was. They insisted: ‘While fishing, say it was while fishing and a stone fell on your hand,’” Jan continues.

According to his account, the manager of the workshop in Vilassar de Mar where he worked drove him to the hospital in Mataró. "In the Emergency Room, the manager said: 'I found him in the street. His hand is wrecked.' And he left me there. When I woke up, they had amputated my hand."

"When someone has an accident like this, you have to call an ambulance and immediately notify the police and the labor inspectorate," he laments. Borja Masramón, the lawyer who, on behalf of the Ecuadorian Consulate in Barcelona, the Federation of Ecuadorian Entities of Catalonia and the National Secretariat of Migrants of Ecuador (SENAMI), defends the victim.

At first, Jan even considered returning to Ecuador, but his colleagues and the staff at the Ecuadorian consulate in Barcelona encouraged him to file a report. His priority is to legalize his status in Spain, the country he emigrated to eight years ago hoping for a better life, where he married and had his daughter. Now he fears his daughter will be frightened to see him without a hand.

He asks himself: "What am I going to do without a hand?" And he answers: "Nobody is going to give me a job."