You can interact with the objects and images you will find here, and find out more information about them.
In addition to being a “sanatorium”, Fontilles was defined as a “colony”. Inspired by the model of the agricultural colonies, work in the Fontilles colony-sanatorium was conceived as a remedy for the moral and physical healing of its inhabitants and as an antidote to the evils attributed to idleness. Work activities were an effective instrument of collective intervention used to structure the times and spaces of people’s daily lives. In addition to agricultural and livestock production, men worked in carpentry, espadrille and shoe making, lamp making and electricity, blacksmithing, printing and bookbinding workshops, or as part of work teams in charge of cleaning and caring for streets and gardens, or masonry and painting tasks in old and new buildings. Women were responsible for washing, repairing, and making clothing, as well as cleaning the facilities. The occupational gender division was also visible in the distribution of the workspaces, which were always close to the men’s or women’s respective areas of residence.
Un cartón, veinte duros. Images and voices of men’s work in Fontilles.
Work was voluntary for those who were declared fit to work by medical officials and was encouraged in different ways, from tobacco packs to wages. The sanatorium guaranteed a bed, treatment, and food for all, but everything else had to be purchased at the commissary, where payment was only allowed using the so-called cartones. “I would earn a cartón, which was worth one hundred pesetas. The banknotes were not banknotes, they were cartones. They were only valid here and served as money”, Paco said as he explained his work in the men’s dining room. Internal currencies were used in many sanatoria as it prevented the circulation of money within the facilities and escape attempts. Sulfonic treatments led to the first discharges in the 1950s and the residents’ work gained a new purpose in Fontilles. The workshops became labour schools aimed at offering vocational training that would facilitate what in those years was called “social reintegration”. The payment of salaries in pesetas also became generalised, allowing purchases inside and outside the sanatorium, or the accumulation of small savings to help families or prepare for departure.
Next to nothing. Images and voices of women’s work in Fontilles.
