The inauguration of the Traumatology Hospital increased the centre’s healthcare capacity

The building was rapidly constructed under a team of architects from Madrid, and it posed a number of major design problems for a building that housed a rehabilitation service and where patients with spinal cord injuries and other severe disabilities had to be treated. For instance, the paraplegic beds, which were 95 cm wide, did not fit through the lift doors, so patients being transferred to radiology had first to be moved onto a stretcher. Similarly, the walls of the physiotherapy area called the “gym,” were made of corrugated aluminium. They had very poor thermal insulation and could barely withstand the impact of basketballs from the nearby courts. Furthermore, in the middle of the “gym” was a chapel, where services were held, always demanding the utmost “silence and reverence.”

The director of the Traumatology hospital was Dr Ramon Sales Vázquez, a highly experienced polio specialist, who was also head of the Neurology Department (located on the first floor of the building) and the Rehabilitation Department (on the fourth floor). The Orthopaedic Surgery and Traumatology Department (on the second floor) was directed by Dr Fernando Collado Herrero, a well-known general surgeon who worked closely with Dr J.J. Madrigal Escuder. The Plastic Surgery Department was directed by Dr Jaume Planas, but when he moved to head the recently created Burns Unit, one of the first in Spain, housed on the fifth floor, Dr José Antonio Bañuelos became the new director of the department. At first, the Microbiology and Pathological Anatomy departments were located on the ground floor of the same building but were later transferred to a newly built facility nearby.

The Traumatology Hospital was inaugurated by the dictator Francisco Franco. This was covered in the newsreel, showing Franco and a large group of doctors and politicians visiting the new facilities. What few people know is that some of the hospitalised patients appearing in the film were, in fact, orderlies who had been asked to pose as patients, as the hospital was still half empty.

The therapeutic area was “the gym,” an open, well-lit space on floor -1 of the building, covering around 1,200 m2. The space was soon fitted with cubicles to provide the privacy needed for patients’ individual treatment. It was initially equipped with balls, weights, non-stationary bicycles, a ping-pong table, archery equipment, air rifles, boxing gloves and six mats. On one side were two swimming pools for adults and children.

Opposite this physiotherapy area was an occupational therapy unit, around 400 m2 in size, where occupational therapists and vocational instructors worked, as the unit focused on the workplace reintegration of patients who, due to their disabilities, had to be retrained in other fields (carpentry, shoemaking, photography, cooking, and basket weaving).

The Rehabilitation Department was organised into sections (Traumatology-Orthopaedics, Neurology and Paediatrics) and, in early 1967, the Spinal Injury ward was opened.