Plaza de la Madre Molas

Behind this plaza in Nueva España stands a woman from Reus who preferred hospitals to drawing rooms. Rosa María Molas y Vallvé was born in 1815 and from a young age cared for the sick, first at the Hospital de San Juan in her home town. She later ran a house of mercy in Tortosa and tended a lazaretto, where the contagious were isolated in times of epidemic. In 1858 she founded the congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Consolation, devoted to nursing and teaching. In June 1844, during the siege of Reus, she stood before General Martín Zurbano and persuaded him to halt the shelling of the city. She died in Tortosa in 1876. She was beatified in 1977 and canonized in 1988, and her order still works on four continents.