Historical Evolution of the Public Hospital System in Spain, 1963-2019: A Path to Equity in Healthcare Access?

This article contributes to the academic debate on the impact of disparities in the spatial distribution of healthcare resources on the quality of the public health system from a historical perspective. In particular, it analyses the evolution of inequalities in the provincial distribution of public hospital beds in Spain during the Franco dictatorship and the more than four decades of the current democracy. The long study period under consideration and the new statistical data used make it possible to examine to what extent the impact of political, economic and socio-demographic factors affected the equitable distribution of hospital coverage in the country.