Pasaje del Doctor Esquerdo

The Pasaje del Doctor Esquerdo, which runs into Calle del Doctor Esquerdo in the Fuente del Berro neighbourhood, remembers a doctor who changed how the mentally ill were treated in Spain: José María Esquerdo Zaragoza, born in Villajoyosa, Alicante, in 1842. On 20 May 1877 he opened the Sanatorio Esquerdo in Carabanchel Alto. There he did something uncommon for the time: he removed physical restraints and punishments and replaced them with occupational therapy. The residents farmed, worked in workshops and put on plays, and the centre became a model of psychiatric reform. His public life ran parallel to the medical one: he was a deputy for Madrid in two terms and, in 1910, ran on a single ticket alongside Pablo Iglesias and Benito Pérez Galdós. He died in Madrid on 30 January 1912. Three years later, Pedro Estany dedicated a monument to him that the Civil War damaged; only the bust survived, and today it is kept in the same Carabanchel sanatorium where Esquerdo had tried out his different way of healing.

In the general elections of 1910, Doctor Esquerdo led in Madrid a joint Republican-Socialist ticket alongside Pablo Iglesias and Benito Pérez Galdós. All three were elected as deputies.