Medieval hospitals.

The health organization in Spain was, during the Middle Ages, one of the largest in the Western world. Hospitals covered as a spider web, the entire territory of the Iberian Peninsula, with a large number of centers, including shelters, charitable homes and hospitals. As a result of mergers of several establishments in large populations, or abandonment and destruction, today many of these centers are abandoned or have been completely demolished. However, we are indebted to these charities who knew mitigate the effects of the great plagues of the Middle Ages, plus famines and wars.

Hunger, leprosy and the Black Death were the great executioners of western European society. Neither the feudal lord; neither bourgeois, the servant, the artisan and peasant possessed protection against the threatening presence of evil, and Spain was no exception. Before the development of these diseases, creating a minimum of hospital facilities was agreed.

From the eleventh century, made mass pilgrimages to shrines, monasteries were overwhelmed by such an influx of people to the point of having to care at all times of day, pilgrims, which prevented the normal development of monastic life. The solution came with the founding of hospitals (in this case the hospital is a place where hospitality is practiced). Institutions often dependent on a monastery. The brotherhoods of pilgrims were also institutions that most encouraged the creation of these beneficial buildings.

The medieval hospital fulfill three basic functions: hospice for beggars, hostel for pilgrims and hospital for the sick. Moreover, these centers also became humanitarian shelters for abandoned children, dramatic social situation that was very worrying as a result of epidemics, famine and war.

In Catalonia, the hospital organization covering the areas of greatest transit of the Spanish geography, from the Mediterranean to Aragon, from the Ebro River to Occitania. Thus, these hospitals appear erected in the main towns (Barcelona, ​​Lleida, Tarragona, Tortosa, Vic, Reus and Manresa), on routes frequented comunicació (Cervera, Calaf, Olesa de Bonesvalls, Solsona ...) the edge of the inner pilgrimage routes (who deviated from the main pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela, in the Pyrenees), hospitals created in the mountain passes, the result of altruistic action of religious orders. These centers can be classified into two groups:

- Due to its location: city, country, road of pilgrimage.

- For its purpose: leprosarium, hostel, specific treatment for fever, leprosy, ergotism or St. Anthony's Fire.

The concept of hostel, refers to that at nightfall, the city closed their doors, leaving foreign hikers in need of shelter around or in the worst case, having to sleep in the open. To this end, were created some buildings that adequately fulfilled their dual mission, hospital and hostel.

From the twelfth century to the fifteenth century was experienced in Spain, a real fever construction of hospitals. This was driven mainly by the terrible epidemics that plagued Christianity and deep social inequalities. Furthermore, from the outset, the space problems were a constant in the life of the hospital.