[Space for the sick, space for physicians: hospital planning in Spain from the 18th to the 20 centuries]

The process of hospitals' evolution into the core of the spanish health system is studied both through a historiographical review and through primary sources. The resulting image is far from a straight one, and we assert that criticisms from the late Enlightenment, which do not preclude a previous age of bloom, prevailed during the first half of the nineteenth century, while the second half saw a contradictory reassessment of hospitals as professional health institutions.