Description
Today's missing building, which was erected at the site that today occupies the town council. The date of its construction is not known, but through the study of different sources it is brought closer to the 13th century, framed in the context of the Christian reconquest under the baton of Fernando III the Holy. In 1244 Arjona is conquered and as such began to form Cofradias under the title of a saint, to whom the aid goes to the most disadvantaged.
The first fact of the existence of the Hospital of San Miguel is given by Jimena Jurado "Historia o Anales del Municipio Albense Urgavonense" 1643, arguing that already in 1488 a total of six hospitals are quoted in Arjona (Santa María, San Miguel, San Juan, Santiago, San Bartolomé, Santa Olaya).
Another data showing the antiquity of these Hospitals was found in 1542, when the Supreme Pontiff issued his Bula to make an inventory of the number of hospitals in Spain, calling for the elimination of those who by their poverty did not meet basic needs. In response to the Bula, the lobby next to the officers of the village's cofradies meet and decide to reduce all hospitals to one, leaving only the Hospital of San Miguel, which was better located and more capable.
As far as the location is concerned, there is no doubt that it occupied the left side of what is now Hospital Street and the old La Plaza Street (now Cervantes). The most obvious evidence of its location is found in a drawing from 1628, published by Don Juan González in "Historia de la Ciudad de Arjona" 1905.
At the end of the 17th century the family of the perpetual regior of the villa Corrales Javalera serves it as endowments, highlighting the breadth of its rooms, highlighting an oratory above all. From this date on, the historical reviews that refer to the above-mentioned hospital are remarkable, highlighting that of Don Pascual Madoz, who, in his "Geographical, Statistical and Historical Dictionary of Spain" 1845 writes "Arjona...... has a Hospital entitled San Miguel, with public prayer, founded in 1665 by Don Bernabé Corrales Javalera...... The hospital is in charge of an administrator and has a surgeon and nurse to assist the suffering humanity of both sexes that is admitted to it."
The progress of the centuries, the new laws inherited from the French tradition, public hygiene and urban police, close the location of the hospital. These ordinances put in place the mechanisms for the new location of the Hospital, June 1863 in a Act of the Council "the governor is asked to allow the House of the King and to temporarily enable the hospital..." This house located in the square of Santa María belongs to Don José Pérez de Herrasti, which gives way for a modest price, thus increasing the works to transfer the Hospital to that place, leaving the works completed in 1868, as demonstrated by the letter that the Architect d. José María Cuenca (architect of the province), emits the mayor of the town.
Since then and after having undergone several remodelations such as that in 1924, in which part of it was sank, it has served as a reference in the cure of the sick, specializing in primary care, until in the 1990s when a new hospital complex in Arjona is built. The site that occupied this hospital, suffered a series of remodeling at the end of the 20th century, passing through the center of Youth Information, until today becoming the Museum of Arts and Costumbres Juan Eslava Galán and the Archaeological Museum City of Arjona, next to the old people's residence "Fundación Corrales Javalera," which follows the legacy used by the Bernabé Corrales Javalera in the second Mitad of the 17th century.
