At least 15 children with eye injuries from fairground attraction in Malaga village

At least 15 children have required medical attention for irritation, discomfort and eye injuries after attending the fair in Valle de Abdalajís. According to the testimonies of families and medical staff, all cases are linked to the bumper car attraction and small metallic particles or traces of grease from the electrical system that might have been released. Some patients were diagnosed with corneal ulcers and told that they would have to go to hospital in the city of Malaga for specialised follow-up if the complaints continued.

The first case was detected on Saturday morning, 9 August, when a minor woke up with a red eye. A foreign body was removed from the child's eye at the local health centre. Throughout the day, the number of children with eye patches increased.

On Sunday morning, María Blanca Castillo - a relative of several of the affected children - said that "there were more than fifteen children waiting for a check-up". According to her, the local pharmacy had already run out of the prescribed treatment. Some families had to go to Malaga to purchase the medicine.

Castillo went to the person in charge of the attraction to ask her to close it down and to request liability insurance. "She told me that the town hall had it and that all the documentation was in order. She even assured me that the Guardia Civil and an expert had checked the attraction without a closure order," she said.

According to her testimony, the operator explained that the foreign bodies removed from the children's eyes could have formed due to the grease accumulated on the metal fabric of the roof, which comes off in particles when the bumper cars are in motion, causing vibrations. This incidence increases when there are power surges and dips.

Valle de Abdalajís mayor Virginia Romero told SUR that the attraction had all the legal requirements for its installation, including technical inspections, revisions and insurance.

"The municipal technicians issued a favourable report and the Guardia Civil checked the documentation at the fair itself," she said. Romero also stressed that, once authorised, "any incident occurring at the attraction is the responsibility of the owner and their insurer". According to the mayor, the town hall is aware of "three or four cases" that have been officially reported, although she acknowledged that references to a greater number of people affected had been circulating.

According to two medical reports, one from the local health centre in Valle de Abdalajís and the other from Hospital Materno in Malaga, a patient was treated for "eye discomfort" after "a fairground ride (bumper cars) in Valle de Abdalajís" and was prescribed eye drops. The other document reports the case of a 15-year-old diagnosed with a "corneal ulcer" and treated with antibiotics for seven days, as long as the condition doesn't worsen.

Several local residents said that health staff had already warned the authorities on Saturday of the backlog of cases. Immediate closure of the bumper cars was not ordered. This recurring incident has sparked debate in the town about the effectiveness of prior inspections and the speed of incident management. For some residents, allowing the attraction to remain open after the first warnings was an avoidable risk, while others said that the fair formally complied with all required regulations before opening.

The manager of the bumper cars told SUR that she had complied with all the documentation required by law and that she had acted immediately after being informed by the Guardia Civil on Sunday afternoon. She said that at no time had she been notified of the problem days in advance, as some residents have stated, and that, after consulting with her expert, she applied the measures indicated to be able to continue operating, including re-oiling the roof of the installation.

She said that, in her 30 years of fair activity, she had never experienced such an incident. In addition, she stated that it could not be fully confirmed that the eye injuries were caused by her attraction, although she did not rule out the possibility.

"The first person harmed if my business has an accident is me," the manager said. She denied having had confrontations with the public and stated that she had refunded the tokens to those who had requested them.