History of a waning infrastructure: the terminal crisis of the rural hospital at the end of the Franco regime (1960-1975)

Abstract

This paper analyses the evolution of rural hospitals in Spain from the second half of the 18th century to the final decades of the Franco dictatorship, a period of rapid development known as «desarrollismo». The first part describes the characteristics of the rural hospitals in towns and villages and the causes of their decline at the expense of provincial hospitals during the 19th century. It also examines the conditions in which rural medicine was practised during the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century (up to the Spanish Civil War). The second part, based on an analysis of hospital registers corresponding to 1963 and 1970, portrays hospital care in the rural world towards the end of the dictatorship and compares its specific dynamics in four regions: Galicia, the Basque Country, La Mancha and Andalusia. For rural dwellers, who comprised the majority of the Spanish population until the second half of the 20th century, the final decades of the dictatorship marked a definitive transition from a rural healthcare model of liberal medicine and (public and private) charity to one of socialized medicine and urban localization.