ABSTRACT
In this chapter I am going to trace the history of asylums in Spain, examine some of the religious and political influences which have shaped their development, and consider the prospects for asylum in the community. A Spanish curiosity in relation to psychiatry is the constancy of popular belief in the power of piety, love, duty and redemption to cure the sufferer of mental illness. This is one of the main reasons why hospitals developed in Spain largely due to the efforts of religious foundations, as places affording charitable shelter, places where the mad who had no other place to go could be taken in until their godlessness passed.
