Salut pública i creixement urbà. Política i acció social en el sorgiment de la Barcelona contemporània

Abstract

This work tries to explain the changes in the first spanish liberalism, not only from the analysis of the general political perspective but from the effects of liberal revolution and industrialisation in a urban environment such as Barcelona as well. In this respect, it shows how the liberal social policy was reduced to strict individualistic, sanitarian and welfare terms during the first decades of the new regime. In this context it deepens in the problematic consequences of this reductionism in an urban environment and it tries to assess to what extent the special industrial reality contributed to overcome that strictly individualistic basis at the end of XIXth. and the beginning of XXth. centuries. To do so, it has been useful to know how the town councils worked and how were its relations with the state's government, in order to catch the centrality of its role in that political changes.