After many years of judicial struggle, Otsanda Tolosa has received the final judgment of the courts: The company CAF will have to pay EUR 133,665, as it has been proven that asbestos killed its father, Celestino Tolosa, and that the company was responsible for the contagion.

On 5 October 2020, the Donostia-San Sebastian Second Social Court condemned CAF to compensate it for not protecting its worker from asbestos, but the latter appealed the judgment before the High Court of Justice of the Basque Country. The company has now reversed and withdrew the appeal, although it has not given any reason to change its position.

The case is significant because, before death, the lungs were administered and frozen for science by Celestino Tolosa in a hospital, and so they were able to demonstrate years later that he was killed by asbestos.

Otsanda Tolosa has explained to ARGIA that they are happy because “we have given their place to the father and we have prioritized the truth above all.” They have also trusted that this sentence will help other asbestos victims, as reported by the Basque Department of Safety. According to the experts, thousands more cases will emerge in the coming years in the Basque Country, and the asbestos victims' association Asviamie has denounced that many times companies try to cover up their responsibility.

Tolosa has strongly criticized CAF’s stance in the trials, “they have appealed to his father’s guilt, as if he had been the cause of the disease,” he explained in an extensive interview with this journal.

However, despite the fact that the judicial route has already been exhausted, the family still considers it necessary to “moral recognition” of the damage caused by the company in order to completely close the wounds.