¿Un enemigo del pueblo?: medicina, industria y turismo en España (siglos XIX-XX)

In 1817, the creation in Spain of the “Cuerpo de Médicos Directores de Baños” was justi fi ed by the need to identify hydromineral remedies and to ensure their proper administration. The measure allowed this new group of experts the ability to choose where and how they wanted to play their new role. The plurality of approaches about spa functions leads to different interpretations about their physicians’ role, either as promoters of the balneary industry or as an obstacle for the development of the touristic aspects of the business. This work will focus on the diversity of spas and the doctors that work there, their collective and individual interests and how both linked with business as far as their synergies and antagonisms. This analysis would be rele- vant in understanding the scienti fi c and institutional framework as well as the development of an academic discourse around touristic and recreational aspects that stem from the use of the mineral waters. The medicalization of the mineral waters and the subsequent creation of the spa resort conferred an important role to the medical directors in this new industry, often in a real opposition to the economic interests of the ow ners, although at some points their interests overlapped. Chemical analyzes of water were among the activities they carried out, to which environmental studies were added in order to build medical topographies of the spa resort area. Both activities claimed to have had an effect on health tourism, convinced of the different bene fi ts and speci fi city of every spa resort. The consequence was that this kind of scienti fi c literature linked healing with environmental conditions that transcended the actual value of water. Halfway between the functions of propaganda and control, between medicalization and tourism, these two groups –bath owners and medical directors- staged a permanent con fl ict that became known as “the balneary freedom” which led to the Cuerpo’s suppression in 1932 and its replacement —after the Civil War— by an inspectorate of bathing establishmentsEn 1817, la creación del Cuerpo de Médicos Directores de Baños se justi fi có por la necesidad de conocer el remedio hidromineral y garantizar una correcta administración del mismo. Esta medida concedía a este nuevo colectivo de expertos poder elegir el lugar en que querían desempeñar su función. La me- dicalización de los baños y la subsiguiente creación del balneario supusieron que los médicos directores tuviesen un relevante papel en el funcionamiento de esta nueva industria, a menudo contrario a los intereses económicos de los propietarios, aunque en algunos puntos coincidentes. Los análisis químicos de las aguas fueron una de sus actividades desarrolladas, a las que se unirían las del estudio del medio para constituir topogr afías médicas balnearias, una literatura cientí fi ca que acabaría por avalar que la curación se vinculaba a condiciones ambientales que trascendían el propio valor del agua. A medio camino entre las funciones de propaganda y control, entre la medicalización y el turismo, estos dos colectivos protagonizaron una permanente contienda que fue conocida como “la libertad balnearia” y hubo de saldarse con la supresión del cuerpo en 1932 y su sustitución, tras la Guerra Civil, por un cuerpo de inspectores de establecimientos balnearios