Before starting this article we must warn you that the ruins of the Toén Psychiatric HospitalThey are not a playground, not even a house of terror ... The deplorable state of the facilities causes a high risk of collapse, so you must exercise extreme caution and avoid entering the different dependencies. Avoid visiting with children and pets, as the remains of metal, glass on the floor and the presence of uncovered sewers could bring you a great upset. Of course we do not recommend visiting at night as I do not think you will see ghosts. And for the friends of others tell you that there is nothing left to take, they have already been ahead of you. In less than a decade, the Toén Psychiatric Hospital has become a great example of human predation aided by the negligence of the competent authorities.
Situation
The Toén Psychiatric Hospital is located in the Toén council , specifically in the SW of the Moreiras parish on a 500-meter-high hill located just eight kilometers from the city of Ourense. For its construction, a rural area was sought, somewhat away from urban centers and in a haven of peace looking for the return of sanity to those unfortunate ones who were within its walls. It never had walls or gates to retain the inmates since the very physical characteristics of the solitude of its location meant that the escapes did not go very far, being the neighbors themselves who warned of the escapes.
Northwest Leprosarium
The origins and future use of the Toén psychiatric hospital were at first different. In 1929 a project for two million of the old pesetas was started to build in this secluded place the Leprosarium of the Northwest of Spain, which was carried out by the architect Don Manuel Conde Fidalgo, also author of the Piñor Antitubercular Hospital and the Model Hospital of the Diputación. To this end, up to 31 hectares of land were ceded by the community members in 1944 with the condition of opening the leprosarium or a similar medical assistance purpose.
However, due to the advances in the cure and prevention of leprosy in the 1940s it was never completed and years later the project was resumed with a different purpose, the construction on the site of a new psychiatric hospital designed by the same author. The 31 ha of land were transferred by the community members of the parish with the specification in the clauses of the hiring of personnel who were residents of the Toén council. This caused the hospital to become an economic engine for the region since there were not a few who worked in it or for it.
Abandoned hallways
Construction of the Toén Psychiatric Hospital
The new hospital (the first intervention in the public psychiatric assistance in Galicia) was built on the old leprosarium project, which was inaugurated in the summer of 1959 with 150 beds, and the psychiatrist Don Manuel Cabaleiro Goás was appointed medical director of the sanatorium, who held the position. until his death in 1977. Soon he received the first fourteen patients transferred from the Conxo hospital and in the first year of operation it housed up to 95 people in treatment. In principle, the hospital was only exclusively for men, the women being referred to the Conxo Hospital and later to the Arevalo psychiatric hospital.
New facilities
We must imagine the conditions and treatments received by inmates in those times when drugs were still beginning to give the first results and their use was not so standardized, although they were already prescribed by doctors. Conditions in the early years would be harsh for the intern, as the staff was scarce and insufficient for the growing number of patients. Cells, electroshocks, white spirit injections and other dubious methods were the order of the day in the early years.
One of the buildings
However, the conditions and advances in psychiatry improved day by day and the Toén hospital and sanatorium came to have a great reputation throughout Europe during the 1960s and 1970s. After Cabaleiro's death in 1978 and the abandonment of Prestigious figures such as Dr. Arturo Rey the Toén psychiatric hospital began its decline.
1975 extension
The Toén sanatorium was inspired by the Gheel hospital project, in Belgium, with the idea of ??a “village-hospital” and had almost 350 inmates, although the most common was that it housed between 150 and 200.
The sick party
Up to a minimum of two occasions (1967-1968) Cabaleiro promoted the so-called Feast of the Sick, where in a public act with family visits, different cultural and sporting events took place and even a soccer game, since the facilities had a field for the practice of this sport.
Interior and graffiti
Psychiatry is gradually changing and the therapeutic-artistic occupational activity is implemented and for this, in addition to various agricultural tasks, various workshops such as carpentry, bookbinding and plastic arts are created. For this, several more buildings were added until 1975, when the so-called Social Club was built, a series of eight buildings destined for different social and humanizing activities such as a cafeteria, hostel, showrooms, conference room, hairdressers, disco, library , chapel ... These last buildings, although they were inaugurated by Fraga, were never completed due to the bankruptcy of the construction company.
Although Cabaleiro's desire was to have a female module, it was not until 1983 that the Women's Unit was opened.
Closure and abandonment of the Toén hospital
Article 20 of the General Health Law, approved in 1986, stated that " attention to mental health problems of the population will be carried out at the community level, enhancing care resources at the outpatient and home level ."
This causes a change in psychiatric hospitalization in the country and allowed the closure of many hospitals. The exception is the Galician hospitals, this one in Toén which closed in 2012 , Outeiro de Rei months later and O Rebullón in Mos in 2016, that is, thirty years after the edict. The few patients who remained in the already obsolete and dilapidated facilities of Toén were transferred to the Piñor hospital.
Abandonment and deterioration
In 2012, as we say, the activity was abandoned and the facilities began to decline. The land was returned to the neighbors who have no way of getting rid of that heavy slab that remains in their domain. For a year Sergas kept him under surveillance but finally he was left to his own devices. This was taken advantage of by the vandals and thieves who took care of everything that had a little value. Windows, frames, chairs, tables, beds, sewers, cables, pipes ... everything you can imagine and that was incomprehensibly abandoned by the authorities.
Today there is nothing left and the level of deterioration that the psychiatric hospital has reached in a short time is shocking. Knocked down walls, fallen floors and ceilings, climbing grasses ... are just a part of the present and black future that holds these facilities that no one has been able to give a coherent outlet.
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