The first stone of the Casa de Salud de Santa Cristina

The date chosen for placing the first stone of the future Casa de Salud de Santa Cristina was June 28 1904. A few days before, following Amalia Loring´s petition to Madrid Town Council, the land for the building was cordoned off. The plot was bounded by O´Donell, Fuente del Berro and Duque de Sexto streets, and by the garden fence of the Virgen de Loreto school. The placing of the first stone was a social event and most of Madrid’s aristocracy was present. Among those who attended were many of the ladies from the Committee set up by María Cristina to raise the funds needed to start the building work. To highlight the event, the area was decorated with tapestries from the Royal Heritage and many plants and there was also a band of musicians. The works were blessed by the Bishop of Madrid-Alcalá and, beneath the place where the first stone was to go, some lead boxes containing coins and the day´s newspapers were buried.

In the photo we can see Alfonso XIII, wearing a Captain General uniform and, bent forward, laying a spade-load of mortar on the place where a crane would then deposit the first stone. We can also see the Queen Mother María Cristina and the infanta María Teresa dressed in mourning, a mourning apparently destined to be eternal a only a few months later, the Princess of Asturias died after giving birth for the third time, an unexpected death after her first two happy childbirths.

At the time, nobody imagined that it would take 20 years to finish the building so that the Casa de Salud de Santa Cristina could start to work.