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Group of Scandinavian volunteers
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| Panel corresponding to the opening of the hospital |
After the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Aid Committees to the Republican Spain were created, both in Sweden and in Norway. The Scandinavian solidarity movement mobilised trade unions, political parties and even civic or religious entities.
With the funds raised they bought medicines, clothes and food that were sent to Spain with the purpose to help civil population. Likewise, in the spring of the 1937 they decided to set up a hospital for blood with 100 beds, on the condition that it should be built in a place located far away from the frontline of fighting. The then-minister of Health of the Republic, Federica Montseny, offered the headquarters of the Industrial School of Alcoy, a to-be-inaugural civil building located in a strategic borough of relative importance and away from the combats.
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Mounting the exhibition panels of the Blood Hospital
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Modules with the copy of an operating theatre
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The Scandinavian expedition was composed of 30 people who worked in Alcoy for some months, until their withdrawn and posterior acceptance by Spanish staff. During the time they stayed in the city, they assisted to 1,224 patients, of which only seven passed away. When they came back to their countries, the hospital -by then with almost 1,000 beds- was taken over by the prestigious doctor Manuel Bastos Ansart, and was renamed Hospital Militar Base. The hospital was running until October 1938, when it was bombed. A few months later and coinciding with the end of the battle, it passed to serve as a prison and in 1943 it made its way into the hands of the Ministry for Education to become into an Industrial School: Industrial School
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| Assembly in the hall of the Palau de Cerveró | Mounting the panels in the Manuela Solís hall of the Palau de Cerveró |
