MADRID — For years, we have heard Spain’s leaders say that we had “the best health care in the world.” This political fantasy has now met with a rude awakening. We have learned the hard way that being deemed the healthiest nation in the world by the World Economic Forum is not the same as having the best health care system.

The health care workers at the forefront of the pandemic — garbed in trash bags for protection and forced to choose which patients to connect to ventilators — had long tried to debunk the myth surrounding the superiority of health care in Spain, denouncing serious deficiencies in the country’s hospitals. We now know they were right. What we may never know is how many lives could have been saved if the country had heeded their warnings earlier.

Spain has both one of the world’s highest coronavirus mortality rates, with over 17,000 people, and the highest rate of infected health care workers. But hospitals had reached their limit before the first Covid-19 patient arrived. It was not uncommon for single a doctor in a hospital to treat up to 60 patients a day. Last year, medical professionals took to the streets, demanding dignity for their profession and better compensation. They are now being battered by the pandemic.

The government’s delayed response to the pandemic, coupled with an aging population and the physical affection that tends to characterize Mediterranean people, contributed to Spain becoming an epicenter of the epidemic. However, some of the decisions that undermined the response were a result of the austerity measures imposed after the 2008 financial crisis.