Wednesday, December 18, 2024, 8:50 p.m.
«Every day each of you constantly does it wrong. All the time. “Every day I have fights, I can’t go to training comfortably.” Completely outraged and through her social networks, Paralympic athlete Sara Andrés denounced the unpleasant situation she faces every day when parking in reduced mobility spaces. At the age of 25, he suffered a car accident that severed his legs below the knees. Later, he suffered from thyroid cancer and another skin cancer.
The Madrid native, one of Spain’s best-known Paralympic athletes, was fourth in the 100 meters and eighth in length at Paris 2024 T64 (for athletes with double amputations). It has great popularity on social networks. And there he let off steam with his followers by showing them a reality that forces him to consider stopping training in Majadahonda.
“It is always in the same place, the Majadahonda athletics track, where you assume that people have a high sociocultural and economic level,” he begins in an eight-minute argument in his ‘stories’. There he recounts his last two encounters with different people who, without the right to use it, have parked in the spaces reserved for the disabled.
According to the account, the first offender explained that she parked “just for a minute” to pick up her daughter. The athlete got out of her car and knocked on the window because she didn’t react when she told him to stop. «You know it’s bad if someone comes and needs it. Because I can, but if someone comes with a wheelchair, they can’t get out… And how the hell does he tell you to get out of the car?” he gets angry.
The double medalist then calls the police and refuses to move the car when the driver’s daughter appears. «The lady started to reverse with me behind. He yelled at me. The girl watching… That you will see how you educate your daughter, but she is seeing it, you are teaching her that you don’t care. The girl started crying and I told her ‘honey, it’s not about you.'”
The next day, the woman from Madrid catches another driver parking without permission in the area for people with mobility problems. Said woman catches him taking a photo “to make the same everyday joke on Instagram.” Then, he scolds her and calls her an “asshole” and a “bitch.” «What do you expect a person to do when you insult them? “Let him hit you?” Andrés reflects. And he reflects: “The human being so unempathetic, so disrespectful, that I settle for you telling me ‘sorry, I’ll leave right now.'”
It is at that moment when he addresses his followers. «Every day each of you constantly does it wrong. All the fucking time. Every day I have fights, I can’t go to training comfortably. Are you really not aware that it is not you, it is the entire society that is not being respected and that people with disabilities are fed up with you? Don’t you realize? I’m getting sick now because I’m fed up with people, I don’t have to educate you, I don’t have to tell you that this is wrong, you should do it. And when someone calls your attention, be humble, ask for forgiveness and leave quickly, which is the least you have to do.
And she continues: «They have called me ‘bitch’, ‘asshole’… I go to training happy and I eat this (breaks down crying) because you are a fucking unfortunate person, and I can’t anymore, I don’t want to. In fact, I’m considering stopping training in Majadahonda because the same thing always happens. I’m fed up. I don’t need brawls in my life, I don’t need this. In Las Rozas it is perfect, there are many more places for disabled people and this does not happen, and if someone gets worse, they are constantly passing the police.
«I’m tired of rude, disrespectful people, who you explain things to them and they come up, insult you and you can’t do anything. I don’t like to cry on camera, but when people are angry they cry and express it and I have a medium and a speaker. Please don’t do this for even a minute, don’t stop, because then someone who needs it comes along and you ruin their day. And even less to the person with a disability, because we did not choose to have it, so since we have not chosen it and it can happen to you, respect. In the hospital, at school… In all the places where there is a disabled place, don’t stand there. Park in Cochinchina, you who have legs, and walk. Or you park in loading and unloading, and you screw everyone, but not just the disabled, you understand?,” he says.
