Confinement, Mendicancy, and the Making of the Street Musician

This chapter analyzes the social, historical, and legal context in which the San Bernardino workhouse and band were created, and in which their activity developed. San Bernardino was founded in 1834 to confine the poor, who were seen as a source of public shame and contamination, and who were blamed for the rise of cholera epidemics in Madrid. The system of confinement relied on the distinction between deserving and undeserving poor and aimed to make them productive. The harsh discipline and deficient hygiene of workhouses, however, acted as deterrents and forced the authorities to resort to violence in order to force reluctant beggars into the workhouse. The increasingly tolerated presence on the streets of blind buskers, who were of no practical use in workhouses, gave rise to new legislation on disability and changed the composition of Madrid’s soundscape.