In the ruins of the Alfaguara Sanatorium, also often called Berta Hospital in Spain, like many other sanatoriums, attempts were made to treat tuberculosis. It is claimed that the victims of the white plague still haunt the land, as does the founding father of the hospital.
One of the smallest haunted hospitals in Spain, it is thought for its long history of ghost and paranormal sightings. This hospital was abandoned for a few years and have become a preferred destination for ghost hunters and thrill seekers alike.
There was a sanatorium in Granada that was in-built 1923 to assist combat the growing problem of tuberculosis in the course of the war within the early Twentieth century and served as a hospital until its closure in 1940.
During the inauguration of the hospital, the Archbishop, the Military Governor and representatives of the Granada City Council, along with a big audience, helped to open the hospital. The furniture was even donated by Queen Victoria Eugenie, who served as president of the Red Cross for Women. The hospital was later abandoned and forgotten, aside from the ghosts which might be said to wander the ruins.
Stare Alfaguara Sanatorium
Sanatorium is an old name for specialised hospitals that were created with specific ailments in mind. They were often in-built the countryside, with loads of fresh air, in a healthy climate, isolated from the surface world. Sanatoriums in Europe and America were very fashionable for the treatment of tuberculosis until the invention of antibiotics.
Tuberculosis was one in every of the deadliest diseases in Europe on the turn of the century and was often called the white plague and is one in every of the oldest diseases for which now we have evidence.
However, it will possibly even be a spot where people can get well from conditions comparable to alcoholism, nervous diseases comparable to hysteria or emotional exhaustion. As medicine progressed, the variety of sanatoriums declined, and lots of were often abandoned within the mid-Twentieth century and have since gained a status for being haunted.
I'm attempting to cure tuberculosis
The Alfaguara Sanatorium was built with money from German philanthropist Berta Wilhelmi and was also often called Berta Hospital. It was in-built what’s now the guts of the Sierra de Huetor Natural Park in a mountain range, surrounded by Mediterranean and pine forests and fresh mountain air, which was especially good for tuberculosis patients.
Berta Wilhelmi was a businesswoman and philanthropist who settled in Granada in 1870 when she was a toddler, having moved from Heilbronn, Germany, after the family mill burned down they usually went to Spain to begin over.
She had a brother named Luis who died of tuberculosis on the age of just 12, and curing people from this disease was near her heart.
So she invested an enormous portion of her personal fortune in constructing a hospital that might help prevent further deaths from the disease.
Bertha Hospital
Together with several doctors, they built a brand new hospital to assist fight the spread of tuberculosis within the region. Tuberculosis was a dangerous disease on the time and was spreading rapidly in the course of the overpopulated period of the world's early industrialization and the upcoming civil war that turned it into an epidemic.
Most patients didn’t pay for his or her stay, because it was primarily a philanthropic project for Berta, and people who did paid three pesetas for food within the hospital.
The small hospital Sanatorium Alfaguara was intended for twenty-four patients, and later a preventorium was created, which later also housed children. They lived in their very own pavilion, named after Berta's son, who died in 1925.
She was well-known for any such work, and founded schools and served as hospital director until her death in 1934. And some paranormal believers claim that her spirit still roams the place, looking for It.
Ruins of the Hospital
The ruins of the Alfaguara Sanatorium constructing are quite hidden and today are mainly rubble and ruins, which you’ve got to achieve by walking up the mountain.
Rumors say that the sanatorium was closed for unknown reasons. We do know, nonetheless, that at the moment the Spanish Civil War was raging, and the hospital was positioned very near one in every of the fronts and trenches at Fort Toriles near the town of Cogollos.
At one point in 1939, greater than 60 armed soldiers were hospitalized, and the nation still feels the scars of the Spanish Civil War, by which 1000’s died for his or her ideologies.
In post-war times, it was completely abandoned, but was protected under the forest protection program of the Nature Park by which it’s positioned.
Ghosts of the Alfaguara Sanatorium
Today, the Alfaguara Sanatorium is often called a haunted place that draws wandering ghost hunters to see the ruins with their very own eyes and investigate the location. People who’ve visited the ruins claim to have seen ghostly figures within the ruins and heard the voices of people that lived there.
Who are the spirits said to haunt this place? The fact is that many tuberculosis patients didn’t survive, and a few say that it’s the ghosts of patients carried away by the white plague that haunt the place.
Given the role of the Alfaguara Sanatorium also within the Spanish Civil War, some speculate that the hospital housed war victims who were ending their days.
Could or not it’s that Bertha herself is haunting her old hospital that she poured her passion and love into, only to see it crumble just a couple of many years after she built it?
Bibliography:
One hundred years have passed because the Alfaguara sanatorium
ALFAGUARA ANTITUBERCULOUS SANATORIUM – GRANADA
Alfaguara sanatorium and clinic – SpeedyLook encyclopedia
A driving tour through essentially the most gloomy haunted houses in Spain
Berta Wilhelmi and the Alfaguara anti-tuberculosis sanatorium | Gomeras
Image Source: Pixabay.com
