Immigration and Health Systems in Argentina. The Case of the Spanish Hospital of Buenos Aires

This is a history of the Spanish Hospital of Buenos Aires sponsored by immigrants, throughout the last three decade of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th, with archival primary sources. The documents reveal the transformation of the objectives of the Hospital from concentrating on the care of poor and indigent immigrants of that origin, to become a private, modern and complex establishment, open to patients of other nationalities, even if it did not completely abandon its charitable objectives. The chapter analyzes how this reorientation was caused partly by the entity’s own operating dynamics and partly by the economic situation of the recipient country.