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The Mental Health Institute of the Holy Cross was inaugurated in 1889 by order of the Hospital de Sant Pau with capacity for more than 700 patients and was conducted by Dr. Pi Molist, a pioneer in the treatment of mental illness in Spain. The former Mental Health Institute of the Holy Cross was built between 1885 and 1915 by the Hospital of the Holy Cross in an estate of 50 hectares. The building was built on land donated by an anonymous benefactor near the farmhouse of Ca by teaching, which is still standing today and serves local neighborhood associations Guineueta.
It was designed by architect Josep Oriol Bernadet from the project Dr. Molist Pi, Pi Molist understand the hospital as an institution of art, a place where the sick, isolated environment, receive good impressions of the environment that would favor its recovery. So the hospital had placed in a well ventilated, equipped with water and far from urban centers but also well connected. At that time it was decided the current Nou Barris, an agricultural area between the districts of Sant Andreu de Palomar Horta and in the parish of Santa Eulalia Vilapicina.
Old church of the Mental Health Institute of the Holy Cross
The building was huge, had twelve pavilions perpendicular, was surrounded by a property of over 100ha from the end of the ride and Pi Molist to the top of Collserola. Within the property there were houses, agricultural land, pastures, etc. Around a central module articulated the two wings, which housed a general department for each sex.
On 30 September 1987, after a century of existence, the Mental closed its doors. Today only three remain pavilions occupied by the District Headquarters and the Library of Nou Barris allowing appreciate the monumentality and sobriety that characterized the work carried out in a simple neoclassical style.
In this huge building, lived people who had lived much of his life, people with serious personality, people's disease which was difficult to live with the family, people then misdiagnosed because they do not have the appropriate means to facilitate their social rehabilitation beings unhappy, lonely supermedicats to electroshock often had practiced as a method known to calm them down.
When the center closed, patients considered milder were sent to their home and they had medical monitoring from a day center that was installed in the same place where he had been the hospital. Those who do not have family care leave, was sent to flats where joined host 4 to 6 people with a tutor. Many of them, who had lived in the center most of his life in and out of their usual habitat or be transferred to Frenopàtic Sant Boi died. The newspapers of the time it echoed all.

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