Within the framework of the International Day of Monuments and Sites, established by UNESCO on April 18, 1983, we highlight the seated statue of Dr. José Eleuterio González (1813-1888), located in Gonzalitos Square, inside the Faculty of Medicine.

The work was made by the outstanding Italian sculptor Michele Giacomino Manchineli (1862-1934), who had a very intense activity in Monterrey, highlighting funerary art and the creation of important monuments such as that of Fray Servando Teresa de Mier.

Michele Giacomino

Shortly after settling in the city, he won the contest to sculpt a statue in memory of Dr. Gonzalez, a project promoted by the City Council on June 10, 1912, to commemorate the centenary of the birth of the benevolent sage.

Old Civil Hospital

Giacomino himself designed and directed the works of the square located north of the old Civil Hospital, where the monument was placed, on 15 de Mayo street, between Pino Suárez and Cuauhtémoc.

The sculpture was placed on a marble pedestal about three meters high, showing Dr. Gonzalez sitting in an armchair; It contained different inscriptions:

TO THE MEMORY OF
BENEMERITE OF
N. LEÓN
DR.
JOSÉ ELEUTERIO GONZÁLEZ
(GONZALITS)
THE CHILDREN OF NL AND MANY
OF YOUR INTIMATES
FRIENDS AND DISCIPLES

At one angle was the sculptor's name:

I WORK FOR
M. GIACOMINO, 1913
The pedestal, on the north side:
THE MEMORY OF THE
BIG MEN
WILL NEVER PERISH

FEBRUARY 20TH
FROM 1913

On the face facing the west, a small bronze sculpture of the facade of the old Civil Hospital and at the bottom the legend:

GONZÁLEZ HOSPITAL
1st. MAY 1860

Another inscription at the foot of the monument, on the south side said:

SUBLIME IN CHARITY
EMINENT IN SCIENCE
EXCELLENT IN TEACHING

On February 4, 1939, Gonzalitos' remains were exhumed from where they were, which corresponded to the chapel of the old Civil Hospital. He was honored and reinhumated in front of him, at the foot of his seated statue in a small garden.

In early 1982, it was decreed that the monument with the seated image of the humanist doctor be transferred to the UANL School of Medicine, and that his mortal remains be buried there.

On June 2, 1982, the solemn ceremony of exhumation, transfer and reinhumation of the mortal remains of the State Benemérito Dr. José Eleuterio González was carried out.

Several changes were made to the monument. The pedestal was smaller and the white marble was changed to pink marble. The boy with the globe and science books that was in front at the bottom, was placed on the right side of the statue. The metal pebetero that was at the foot of the statue was changed to the right side. The bronze relief of the old González Hospital that overlooked the west in the previous monument, was placed in the back.

Since then his mortal remains and his best statue make up the square that bears his name, within the space of one of the institutions founded by him in 1859.