Seguretat pública, higienisme i benestar social. El procés històric de formació del cos de bombers de Lleida, 1840-1975

Abstract

This thesis tells us about the formation and development of Lleida’s fire brigade, a process which takes in from the nineteenth century second half till the twentieth century final years. It is a research that, in order to go deeply into the subject of study itself, has been proposed from two different, but supplementary, approaches. Firstly, it distinguishes the institutional viewpoint which includes the financial analysis and the political situation which has held up the brigade, the regulation applied to organize it, its crew, material resources that have been used, as well as the service offered. Secondly, the brigade has been part of the social background during each historical situation, being considered as a new and necessary tool to strengthen public security and which has grown along other public spirited policies such as hygienism and new urban development. All together, it developed in a context of town planning transformation which led an Old Regime town into a new middle class town, whose structures were thought to enable capitalism to spread. Well into the twentieth century- mainly from the second half onward- the fire-extinguishing service takes up new functions which round off the traditional citizenship protection and advances into the social welfare field. The heuristic groundwork of this essay is based on the analysis of sources from local archives, mainly those of the Paeria in Lleida (townhall), but also newspapers and periodical archives concerning each one of the chronological periods shown in this work.