Architectures of isolation

At the end of the nineteenth century, leprosy was an endemic disease in many towns in the Marina Alta region of Alicante. It was there, in the early twentieth century, that Jesuit Carlos Ferris Vila and lawyer Joaquín Ballester Lloret began their efforts to establish a centre to care for people affected by leprosy from this and other nearby regions. Over the years, hundreds of people joined them from all over Spain. The Fontilles valley was chosen for its sunny weather, abundant water, and protection from the northerly winds. The location also offered a surprising optical asymmetry. While the valley offered a view onto the farmlands which extended towards the Denia coast and onto the horizon, where the sea meets the sky, it was hidden from all the neighbouring towns, being impossible to view Fontilles buildings from any of the nearby villages. Adding to this natural barrier came other architectural solutions designed to separate insiders from outsiders, men from women, and the “healthy” from the “sick”. The preserved plans and maps show us the design of buildings that were open for the healthy and closed in on themselves for the sick; the shape of spaces such as the church, the theatre or places of work and leisure, designed so that everyone could be together and kept apart; or the intricate network of paths drawn to avoid encounters between one another. 

Isolation sites such as Fontilles were built between the last third of the nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth century in remote mountains, on islands, or in river meanders in some countries of Europe and numerous countries of America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. Colonized territories where leprosy was perceived as a risk to people’s health and metropolises that felt the threat of an evil that circulated uncontrolled along the routes opened by colonial expansion. The protection of the social body was achieved at the cost of the sacrifice of thousands of people who, in the opinion of leprologists, governments and religious and philanthropic organizations, had to be isolated to free them from social rejection and a stigma that, paradoxically, was reinforced by isolation.