The Unfulfilled Project of the Model Mental Hospital in Spain: Fifty Years of the Santa Isabel Madhouse, Leganés (1851-1900)

Abstract

The scant attention paid to the mentally ill by the Spanish Administration in the nineteenth century was reflected in the country's run-down and overcrowded mental hospitals. It was not until the reign of Isabel II (1843-1869) that Provincial Councils (Diputaciones) officially took responsibility for the insane. In 1851 the Santa Isabel Madhouse in Leganés (Madrid), was opened as a National Mental Hospital. Several projects attempted to classify it as `a model home for the disturbed'. The aim of the paper is to offer new data on the first fifty years of the institution (1851-1900). Original manuscripts from the National Historical Archive (Madrid) and criticisms published in the press are discussed. Various plans to improve the old building - as well as requests for assistance from the institution to the Administration - were repeatedly unsuccessful, and the institution was insufficient to provide national cover. The appointment of the celebrated psychiatrist Luis Simarro (1851-1921) as department head brought no improvement. At the end of the century, the Leganés Mental Hospital was far from being a `modern and model' establishment, and it had become a charity and an asylum.