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.