‘625 years of the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau’ festival

It all began in 1401, when the Consell de Cent and Barcelona Cathedral agreed to bring together several scattered hospitals in a single care centre. That decision gave rise to the Hospital de la Santa Creu and a new way of organising care for the sick in the city.

The project was consolidated that same year with the start of the Gothic building and the papal recognition of Pope Benedicto XIII. Since then, the institution has undergone more than six centuries of social and healthcare transformations, reaching the emblematic Recinte Modernista de Sant Pau, designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner, where architecture and medicine came together to imagine a modern hospital.

To celebrate the anniversary, Sant Pau has prepared an annual programme of activities combining memory and citizen participation. The celebrations will begin on 15 March with an open day at the modernist site, including music, family activities, screenings and a new permanent exhibition dedicated to the hospital’s history.

Throughout the year, talks, exhibitions and concerts will be added, covering different stages of its history. More than an anniversary, the commemoration invites us to look at the past in order to understand how an institution born in the fifteenth century remains part of the city’s present.