RESUMENA comienzos de la década de 1930, una serie de factores obligaron a transformar una de las instituciones que más se había destacado en España en la labor de conseguir la reinserción social de las personas con discapacidades: el Instituto de Reeducación de Inválidos del Trabajo. La crisis económica de 1929 y las reformas legislativas destinadas a regular los accidentes del trabajo pusieron de relieve, entre otros factores, las limitaciones de esa institución para cumplir sus objetivos. Tras un período de cierta indefinición, el centro reabrió sus puertas como Instituto Nacional de Reeducación de Inválidos. Se trataba así de aprovechar el impulso anterior para destinar sus actividades a la recuperación de todas las personas con discapacidades.El trabajo que presento intenta explorar el papel desempeñado en ese proceso por la presencia de la poliomielitis en esos años en España. Se pretende poner de manifiesto cómo esa enfermedad permitió justificar la necesidad de dar continuidad a la labor de un grupo de profesionales, y sirvió para reorientar el programa de reeducación de «inválidos» que se había implementado con anterioridad. A través de ello, es posible apreciar la manera en que el fuerte proceso de medicalización que tuvo lugar en el centro permitió reforzar la consolidación de un «modelo individual» de discapacidad, con lo que ello llevaba aparejado de cara a la constitución en España, entre 1930 y 1950, de un determinado estereotipo cultural sobre las personas afectadas. Por fin, el trabajo pretende poner de relieve la forma en que todo ello se veía enmarcado en un proceso de desarrollo profesional de los cirujanos que practicaban la traumatología y ortopedia.
Work was given an important position within the political programme of General Franco's dictatorship, which considered work to be a fundamental factor for economic development and a means by which the regime could exercise its power. Thus work became an essential, pivotal element on which Spanish social policy was organised. Disability, considered to be an obstacle to the correct performance of the work activity, arose as a phenomenon that had to be included in the general measures aimed at regulating and controlling the performance of the productive tasks. Proof of this can be seen in the steps adopted regarding health and safety in the factories and the recovery of victims of accidents that had occurred at work.The aim of this article is to explore these interventions and use them to show how disability was used as a vehicle to implement steps aimed at disciplining the population as a whole. Using legislative documents, general and professional press and propaganda pamphlets as the main sources, this article shows how the discourse generated in relation to occupational medicine represented an essential route, not only for developing a medical model of disability in Spain, but also for exercising a specific form of biopolitics.
In 1981, Spain was threatened by the sudden appearance of an epidemic-like disease, one which was unknown to that date. The Toxic Oil Syndrome, as it was later named after the oil that caused it, thus demanded a response that became conditioned by the fact that the biological nature of the disease was unknown, but also, significantly by the complex situation in the country at that time. Spain was immersed in process of great political change, as well as a difficult economic situation, the authorities were obliged to react in not ideal conditions and in accordance with the very values that the new model of social relations that was being developed. This paper aims to look at the way in which the Toxic Oil Syndrome acted as a catalyst and accelerated the healthcare reform that, already prior to the outbreak of the epidemic, had been deemed necessary. This work focuses mainly on the response of the health system regarding those affected by the epidemic, as it was forced to treat a group of people with severe physical side effects which would lead to disability within a new framework of social relations. It thus aims to illustrate how many of the measures adopted were in accordance with the main ideas behind the reform, and also how these measures were precursors of those which were later applied to the population as a whole.
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