In recent years, Madrid residents have increasingly faced long waits for medical care. Between August 2019 and August 2025, the number of people waiting for a consultation, examination, or surgery has risen by almost two-thirds. This is reflected not only in statistics but also in the lives of ordinary people.
Arturo García Mercado, a resident of the city’s southern district, went through a tough ordeal: he was diagnosed with rectal cancer in 2022. The diagnosis came after a year of waiting and numerous tests. By the time the disease was detected, surgery was no longer an option. Treatment began only after three months, and side effects continued to emerge for another year. When a suspicious growth was discovered again in January 2025, he was scheduled for a CT scan in nine months’ time. The wait seemed unbearable, and only after taking decisive action was he able to have the scan in two weeks. Fortunately, the tumor turned out to be benign, but the experience of waiting left a lasting mark.
Arturo’s situation is just one of many similar stories hidden behind the dry statistics. In August 2025, Madrid recorded over a million appointments for doctors, examinations, and surgeries. By comparison, six years earlier there were just over 620,000 such appointments. On average, waiting times for surgery are now almost a week longer than in 2019. Diagnostic procedures are postponed by three weeks, and specialist consultations by a month.
Regional authorities attribute the increase in queues to a growing population: over six years, Madrid’s population has grown by about half a million people. They also note that a similar trend is seen in other regions of the country, especially after the pandemic. August is traditionally considered a challenging month for healthcare due to vacations, but both in 2019 and 2025 the situation was similar.
However, experts and opposition representatives point to other reasons. Among them are chronic underfunding of the healthcare system, staff shortages, and the migration of specialists to the private sector. Some believe that regional authorities are deliberately directing patients to private clinics, which only worsens the situation in public institutions.
In 2024, a record number of people waiting for consultations was registered—over one million. Since then, the situation has hardly changed. For many patients, accessing medical care has become a real ordeal. Arturo, for example, has to wait six months between visits to his psychiatrist, while appointments with other specialists are scheduled for late 2025 and even 2026. He points out that he suffers from serious health problems as a result of treatment side effects, and getting timely help is nearly impossible.
Despite statements from regional authorities that Madrid still leads in the speed of surgeries compared to other regions, the average waiting time has also increased: from 59.7 days in 2019 to 65.4 days in 2025. A similar situation is seen with diagnostics and consultations. Behind these numbers are real human lives, anxieties, and disappointments.
The question of how the problems of access to medical care will be resolved remains unanswered. For now, for many residents of Spain’s capital, waiting for a doctor’s appointment has become part of daily life.
