franco basaglia and spain · 2020. 10. 9. · basaglia and spain • the life and work of franco...
TRANSCRIPT
Franco Basaglia and Spain
Juan José
Martínez JambrinaPsychiatrist
Head of Mental Health Service, Avilés, Asturias
Basaglia and Spain
• The life and work of Franco Basaglia is well‐ known in Italy, and amongst a certain section
of Spanish psychiatrists too.
• However, the newer generations of Spanish psychiatrists hardly know him, nor the effort that was required to develop Spanish
psychiatric care outside of the asylums.
•
Basaglia and Spain
• The figure of Franco Basaglia in Spain is quickly associated with two adjectives: antipsychiatrist and communist. From what I
have read, Basaglia rejected the label “antipsychiatrist”
in numerous interviews, and
as to his political ideas I would argue that despite his progressive leanings he was able
to reconcile his position with the support of Democratic Christians.
Basaglia and Spain
• For this reason it would seem to me very interesting to review the personal contacts he made and the reception of
his work in Spain.
• In beginning to draw together this information I found very few primary sources, and it took me more time than I had
expected.
• Today I will present the outline of the project that I hope to develop with the support of both Spanish and Italian
colleagues. I am of the belief that history should be based upon facts, and not personal opinion.
•
Basaglia and Spain
• Franco Basaglia had a brief but especially intense relationship with psychiatrists mainly from Barcelona,
Madrid, Asturias and Andalucia. • Moreover, he forged relationships with all those that
formed the first nucleus of transformation in psychiatric care in Spain, in the form of the Psychiatric
Coordination Group (la Coordinadora Psiquiátrica). This group, created in 1971, after the so‐called “Asturian
May”, could be considered the equivalent to the “Democratic Psychiatry”
group in Italy.
•
Basaglia and Spain
• Franco Basaglia arrived in Trieste in the autumn of 1971, after seven years in Gorizia
and two years in Parma. My information appears to confirm that Basaglia travelled
several times to Spain to attend meetings of the Psychiatric Coordination Group, although there are two visits that are particularly
important and well‐documented.•
Basaglia and Spain
• The first was in 1978, for the release in Madrid of Marco Bellochio´s “Locos de desatar”
(Matti di
slegare), and during which Basaglia visits Madrid, Barcelona and Andalucia.
• The second important visit was in March 1980, for a Congress that took place in Gerona, where he held an interesting debate with the Spanish
psychiatrist Carlos Castilla del Pino.
•
Basaglia and Spain
• However, probably the very first contact was made in April 1973, in a meeting held in Venice. The Spanish
delegation was made up of Ramón García, from Barcelona and José
García, from Asturias. They
reported on the conflicts that there had been in Spain and of the movement that was beginning.
• Well‐known representatives from France, Germany and Italy participated in this meeting. Someone from
England had the idea of creating a co‐ordinating group at a European level that would, amongst other things,
elaborate a “map of shame”
of psychiatric care.
Basaglia and Spain
• In the end, instead of the group that it had been proposed to create in Venice, at a meeting in Brussels in 1975 there
formed the “International Alternative Psychiatry Network” (El Réseau Internationale). This network held meetings in
subsequent years and wrote alternative papers about the situation of psychiatric care.
• The network also encouraged a great deal the alternative experiences happening in central Europe at the time. The meeting held in Trieste, in September 1977, was highly
significant. Here the closure and overcoming of the asylum system was announced.
• In 1978, Legge 180 was approved.
Basaglia and Spain
• In 1978 Franco Basaglia is invited to visit Madrid to give an official conference in the Red Cross Hospital as well as
another one, clandestine, in the Gregorio Marañón Hospital. The latter was organized by Dr. González de
Chávez for the premier of the film “Locos de Desatar” based upon the previously published book.
•• On this trip Basaglia also visits, at least, Barcelona and
Andalucia. His leadership and work are by now well known in Spain. Various articles in the mainstream press pay
testament to the importance of the trip.•
Basaglia and Spain
• In 1980, shortly before his death, he again visits Spain. In March of that year he attends a conference in
Gerona where he encounters the great star of Spanish psychiatry, Carlos Castilla del Pino. There is an
interesting and tense debate between them, some fragments of which I have managed to get hold of.
• Franco Basaglia died in August 1980, but his impulse had by then already resulted in the forging of links and
connections between Spain and Italy that will last a long time. It seems necessary to recover and maintain
these links given the fruits already obtained.
Basaglia and Spain
• The contact between Asturias and Trieste intensified after the eighties. The Perlora Conference in Asturias was
organized and notable representatives from the Italian movement came to Asturias.
• Towards the end of the eighties and beginning of the nineties an integrated network of groups was formed. This
comprised groups from Greece, Portugal, Italy –
principally Trieste and Arezzo – along with Asturias and Andalucia
from Spain. They organized meetings and activities during five years. As a result of this connection psychiatrists from Asturias continue to participate in activities and
anniversaries that are organized in Trieste.•
Basaglia and Spain
• In 1991, the astuarian psychiatrists Víctor Aparicio and José
García organized a tribute to Franco Basaglia in
Oviedo. Present at the act were his widow, Franca Ongaro, and Dr Rotelli, who said a few words.
• The press gave an account of the event that closes with the inauguration of a plaque in honour of Dr. Basaglia
in the old Psychiatric Hospital that would be destroyed in 2002 to make way for the current Asturian General
Hospital, opened just two years ago.•
Basaglia and Spain
• In the sixties, Gorizia was the first announce that the time of closing psychiatric hospital had
arrived. • Oviedo in Asturias, 1971 was the second place in
Europe where the mental healthe workers began to close the psychiatric institution. All of them
were fired. But the light of the transformation had been set up.
• Asturias and Trieste had been parallel stories. But the rest of Spain, with some exceptions, stills
suffers the so‐called “half‐way psychiatric reform”
Asturian psychiatrists pay tribute to Franco Basaglia
Basaglia´s death, 1980
Hommage to Basaglia, 1991, Oviedo
• Asturias: one the places in Spain
where Psychiatric Reform has been developed with
good results