Lanzarote is the only Canary Island that has a hospital center dedicated to geriatric care. The building where this service is offered, the Insular Hospital of Arrecife, was built 75 years ago on Juan de Quesada Street and, amid rumors of closure due to the structural damage affecting the building, proudly displays its position as a pioneer in comprehensive care for the elderly in the archipelago.
The Insular Hospital of Lanzarote was inaugurated on October 28, 1950, during the Franco dictatorship. On an island much poorer than today, with a still nascent public health system and many shortcomings, this space arose with the aim of housing a charity center, where the most humble people who did not have access to other resources were cared for. At that time, it also had an asylum and a general medicine ward.
According to the work Insular Hospital of Lanzarote. Historical Synthesis (1950-2000), during its first decades, the economic difficulties the island was going through and the lack of budget and staff at the center hindered the work of healthcare professionals, and the hospital advanced very slowly as a kind of center for everything.
During the 70s, the services of the Social Security were developed on the island and this "led the hospital to a decapitalization, not only economic, but also of personnel", says Domingo de Guzmán Pérez during an interview with La Voz, who knows the intricacies of the space well, as he was its medical director from 1982 until his retirement in 2022.
"It was like an old healthcare structure, I don't say outdated, but old, from another era," insists the former head of the space. With that panorama of the Insular Hospital, he began his journey at the head of the service, hired by the Cabildo of Lanzarote, which managed the center until 2019.
In those early years, Domingo de Guzmán Pérez and his team cared for elderly people who were admitted to the center, but also for patients who came from the Virgen de Los Volcanes General Hospital, the poor of the island, and employees of the Cabildo.

Geriatrician Elisa Corujo arrived at the Insular three years after Pérez, in 1985, and dedicated 25 years of her life to the center. When she started working in this space, the facilities were experiencing a very different reality than today. "There were people crowded together, people who had no shelter," says Corujo, who recalls that at that time they were managed by "a religious community" and patients with different realities cohabited, from people with physical or functional disabilities to others with behavioral disorders.
Her first years in this hospital were based on "organizing" to give "dignified care to those people who were admitted or resided" in it. In addition to the physical deficiencies of the building and the lack of staff, at that time, this center cared for different types of patients. Furthermore, it was "the only nursing home that Lanzarote had", says the geriatrician.
It was not until the approval of the General Health Law of 1986 that the Spanish system became a universal and public health system, which could be accessed by all the population that was affiliated with Social Security. Three years later, in 1989, the Doctor José Molina Orosa General Hospital of Lanzarote was inaugurated.

The path towards specialization in geriatrics
With the opening of the Molina Orosa General Hospital, the Insular had to move towards "a complementary service, that did not duplicate the services and towards a modern framework", says Pérez, who obtained the support of the Cabildo of Lanzarote to turn the space into a geriatric care center. Then, it was decided that this path "was ideal" because the center already housed elderly patients and received elderly people who required a "more prolonged" stay, indicates the doctor.
"When you want to work on a transformation, you have to have a clear idea and that is where you are going," says the former director. "The Insular Hospital has been the starting point for thinking about geriatrics," continues Corujo.
The 1990 reform
While they were working on the specialization of the center, they continued to provide other services, such as surgical activities or other specialties. At the beginning of the 90s, with Nicolás de Páiz at the head of the Cabildo of Lanzarote and with the insistence of the workers, it was achieved that the space was adapted to geriatric needs with a reform. "It was not ideal, it was what the building allowed," recalls the doctor.
In that remodeling, new external consultations were created, a classroom, a new conference room, the Medium and Long Stay Unit was reformed, also a Geriatric Day Hospital, the Acute Geriatric Unit was improved, and the Day Hospital was oriented towards rehabilitation, explains Pérez. In addition, since 2000 it has had the only Teaching Unit in the archipelago to train healthcare professionals in Geriatrics.
From then on, the Insular Hospital provides socio-healthcare, since it has not only addressed health problems, but does so from a social perspective responding to different realities. Among them, patients who need a long-term admission, either because they do not have a home where they can recover optimally or a family network to support them.
In this line, it has been growing with the incorporation of different specialists, including physiotherapists, occupational therapists, social workers or psychologists. Little by little and supported by the efforts of Domingo de Guzmán Pérez and a conscientious healthcare team, the Insular became a "monographic" and "complementary" center to the Molina Orosa.
2019, incorporation into the Canary Health Service
It was not until 2019, when the Insular Hospital became managed by the Canary Health Service, after decades as the responsibility of the Cabildo of Lanzarote. "It was an important milestone, it had been fought for for many years and for one reason or another it did not come out", recalls the former head, who prefers not to stop to disdain the reasons for that delay.
For Domingo de Guzmán Pérez, the Insular was able to access the necessary health technology, including the computerized medical history and to be able to expand its staff. "The care improved a lot, the possibilities of reaching many patients improved, too," he continues.
In addition, he argues that the contribution was mutual and that the Management of Health Services of Lanzarote also benefited from this incorporation.
The possible closure of the Insular Hospital
Both Elisa Corujo and Domingo de Guzmán Pérez agree on the importance of preserving the services of the Insular Hospital of Lanzarote, which has been so costly to create. "Lanzarote is above many levels of care at the national level because in a small place we have all levels of care, with adequate professionals", says Corujo. However, the geriatrician invites to go "one step further" and points out the need to create "dignified spaces", which solve the structural problems of the building and add a Medium and Long Stay Unit.
The geriatrician argues that the services provided at the Insular Hospital are not only necessary, but also cover a part of the care that reduces healthcare costs, while "complements acute healthcare". However, she points out that the building has "a very fragile architecture" and "a great risk" for the people who work and receive assistance in it.
In this way, she maintains that "having a romantic attitude with the spaces does not lead, but to ostracism" and that "we really have to think that the spaces do not correspond to us, but correspond to the population and their needs".
Beyond the physical space in which the activity takes place, in the same building that saw the birth of the geriatrics service or in an annex to the Molina Orosa, Corujo advocates for "putting the focus on hope and that from the political and socioeconomic point of view a reflection is made in that space, which is quite broad" to "make a modern insular hospital, adapted to the times".
For his part, de Guzmán, advocates for the center to be "reformed and improved so that the same care that is being given is more comfortable, safer for the patients who are there". In this sense, he argues that the Geriatrics Service "should not be divided" and that "any decision that is made should be to improve it".
Despite its health and social value, the one who was responsible for the center for four decades recalls that the Insular Hospital is "a historical building", which in addition to having changed the health history of the island "has artistic and architectural values that should be preserved".
