Leganés Psychiatric Hospital has been the subject of several studies about its institutional history, clinical activity and demography of its institutionalized population. The first decades of the twentieth century are the less explored years; however, important events for the development and establishment of the discipline of psychiatry happened in Spain during this period.

To describe the sociodemographic and hospitalization characteristics of the patients who were admitted to Leganés National Asylum between 1900 and 1931.

This is a retrospective case series study. We reviewed medical records found in the Historical Archives of Psychiatric Institute Germain (n = 1043) of inpatients admitted between 1900 and 1931. We analyzed sociodemographic and hospitalization related variables of medical records with SPSS v21. We consultedbibliography, such as asylum documents and diverse primary and secondary literature.

Most inpatients were male, single, with an average age of 38 years, came from home and were admitted as fee-paying boarders. Circa 64% of them remained in the institution until death and the average stay was 7.92 years.

Even though the Leganés Asylum was born amidst debate on the asylum model, it did not meet the expectations. Among other reasons, it presented serious architectural deficiencies and was unable to classify inpatients according to the French tradition (agitated, dirty, quiet) or to separate populations, such as minors or criminal inpatients, thus becoming a charity institution asylum instead of a therapeutic mental hospital.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.