Olentzero is the parents. But the prison system breaks all the bridges between prisoners and the outside, even relatives. So who's the prisoner's Olentzero? He who makes the condemned one disappear among the walls and treats him as a minor without rights or decisions, giving himself the role of omnipotent tutor.

The collective Olentzero of prisoners in the Spanish State is the Government and the Directorate of Penitentiary Institutions. The particular Olentzero of the prisoners in Zaballa is Benito Agirre, director of the prison, who this same year announced in the 360º program of EITB – already by then there were dozens of people killed in his reinsertion center – “We serve our clients, who are our in-house clients, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day and also at home.” The Olentzero is also the primary care head of Zaballa, Asier López de Arkaute, who in the same program indicated that among the prisoners there are “disabled”, serious prisoners or elderly, so it is “logical” that “some of them die”, but that it did not show any disorder because they were in prison. Mari Domingi is the deputy director and psychologist at Mercedes Iruarrizaga prison, who said that incarceration helps criminals “stop and think”, that there is no one in prison who should not be or who praised the benefits of isolation – and criminal measures –. “How do you treat the prisoners?” the presenter asked. “Well, with a lot of affection.”

A new death, apparently due to the mixture of drugs given by the prison itself – which always has to walk around, in the absence of official information and transparency. As a result of their actions, the above-mentioned would surely tell us. But I remember what Ekaitz Samaniego told me, who in Murcia prison were distributing drugs for three days to inmates on Fridays, to ease weekend work. To prisoners with severe drug dependencies, to dose for themselves the three-day dose in a unique way. EKAITZ says that the scenes of the Friday zombies were dantescas, which officials also saw, insensitive.

And I remember the Alice Sáez de la Cuesta Pandemic Calendar, which we received on May 13 in the prison of Castellón: “Tonight Carolina has died. The reports of the General Secretariat of Penitentiary Institutions will include an additional death toll. But for us, the girls in the eighth module, it's not a number."

I also recall the letter from a prisoner in Zaballa that we have not yet published, a cellmate of another of the prisoners who died this year: “Among prisoners, every time something like this happens, a very rare environment is created. Death feels and looks (they took him in front of the whole module, funeral services showed no respect for us). Minute of silence in the dining room at lunchtime and... life continues.” I imagine the same scene on Christmas Day, between the messages of happiness and affinity of television, repeating that they are days to remember my family and my friends ... To this prisoner in Zaballa we asked about the leadership's action in the face of the deaths: “Address: What is that? She doesn't feel, she doesn't suffer... It doesn't give me my face! The master is a coward, it looks like a stone, it's there, it gets tough, but it only serves to hurt."

And back to Alicia and Carolina: “There’s a lot of talk about loneliness in the death of COVID-19 patients and that family members can’t help. Well, if you die here, it's always alone. It’s cruel, and these days it shows you the crudest way.”

Happy new year.