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In order to know the history of the current CAP Maragall, we must go back to the end of 1922, when the Camp de l'Arpa area was deprived of a service that covered basic health needs, especially for women who had to give birth in their respective homes. They hardly had the minimum medical attention.
Sometimes it was the neighbors themselves or a midwife who performed the labor. If there were no complications, everything was resolved satisfactorily, but as soon as an anomaly appeared, the real problem came.
Seeing these basic needs of the Camp de l'Arpa and Guinardó sectors, a group of people, including several doctors, decided on their own to try to improve medical care, creating a structure that would end the problem.
This group of people was led by Dr. Climent Selva i Bolós and the industrialist Josep Laffite i Sopena, who set out to build a hospital where they could care for them more efficiently.
The interest of Dr. Selva i Bolós found a quick response from other doctors, who joined the idea and suggested forming a society that would give shape to the project.
The new doctors who joined the project were: Enric Baldocchi and Foment, Emili Ardèvol, Joan Riera and Vaquer, Salvador Casanovas i Gasulla. In 1923, they formed the company Institut Ginecós, S.A. and they acquired some free land in the old Garrotxa street, 52-54 (old Horta road and current Paseo Maragall), next to a building that was later demolished, due to the urbanization of the area and the opening of San Antonio Maria Claret.
For its construction, the architect Francisco de Paula Quintana i Vidal was hired, who signed the construction plans with the manager of the company Climent Selvas i Bolós, on July 23 of the same year.
The hospital was made up of two symmetrical buildings of three heights plus a ground floor, which were joined by a two-story element, in which the entrance door that served both buildings was located. A first floor with a viewpoint with three glass doors and an enclosure with a small terrace and a small construction finished in a dome.
It had 60 individual rooms, which incorporated a small individual service, with a toilet and sink. Each building had a complete surgical department. It was equipped with an elevator, freight elevator and a heating service.
For its operation and the care of the sick, the hospital management had hired a complete team of internal doctors, surgeons, specialists and a team of nurses belonging to the nuns of the sisters of charity.
The clinic was inaugurated on the occasion of a visit made by Alfonso XIII to Barcelona on Saturday, October 29, 1927. He arrived at the institute accompanied by the Duke of Miranda and the civil governor, General Milans del Bosch.
He was received by doctors Selvas, manager of the Clinic, urologist doctor Seres, surgeon doctor Pamies, radiologist doctor Carulla and the chief doctors of the different departments. The Board of Directors of the entity was also present in full, with Messrs. Espí, Baldoehi Vila, Bruna, Laffite, as well as the prior of the Discalced Carmelites, Father Casulà.
The following day's La Vanguardia on page 10, in a large part of the fourth column, gave an account of the inauguration, commenting on the visit to the chapel on the first floor, the conversations that the monarch had had with the nuns of the hospital and the splendid lunch served by the sisters themselves. Alfonso XIII, was fired by the manager, Dr. Selvas, with cheers and applause from all present.
Although the intention of the founders of the Instituto Ginecos was that the hospital, which had been provided with specific health equipment to carry out its female care activity, would be dedicated to the strict care of women, the hospital needs of the neighborhood at that time advised the a short time that people of the masculine gender were also cared for.
With the end of the civil war, the management became part of the National Delegation of Unions and the Union Work of July 18, dependent on the Compulsory Health Insurance Agency, which acquired the building from the company Institut Ginecós, S.A, through early January 1943, which turned it into the Obra Social clinic on July 18.
On the 10th, La Vanguardia published that a representative of the Instituto Ginecós, S.A. He had delivered to the new hospital in the person of comrade José María Castro Calzado, the amount of 10,000 pesetas and a part of the hospital material.
The clinic was integrated into Social Security, continuing to operate for a few years. The inauguration of new hospitals, with much more modern equipment to centralize efforts to better treat diseases, kept patients away from the hospital, which little by little entered a state of decline.
The construction of the new hospitals with a service capacity that began in October 1955 with the construction and subsequent inauguration of the Vall d'Hebron Hospital and, later, that of other hospitals, sentenced the old clinic, which was closed for a time.
With the restoration of autonomy again, in 1988, the old building was transferred to the Generalitat de Catalunya, which demolished it and included it within the heritage of the Servei Català de la Salut, to convert it into the new CAP Maragall of our days.
