Anatomical theatres and the teaching of anatomy in early modern Spain

Spain built permanent anatomical theatres from the middle of the sixteenth century: one was ordered at Salamanca in June 1552 and finished in May 1554, and Zaragoza, Barcelona and Valencia followed on a different institutional model. The building contracts survive and give measurements, seating and dissection quotas — and the same documents say whose bodies were opened: the executed, and hospital dead too poor to pay for a funeral.