The history of Madrid, collected in 25 kilometers of documents in its first Provincial Historical Archive

The ministerial order that launches this process includes the background of this ‘historic debt’ that was owed to the Community of Madrid. Because the provincial historical archives were created by decree of 1931, but not in the Madrid region. A lack that was remembered and claimed in a non-law proposal approved in the Madrid Assembly in 2009, and that was claimed again in the Archives and Documents Law of the Community of Madrid that was approved in 2023.

Now, the Archive is already a legal reality, and will integrate the funds of the Historical Archive of Protocols – the documents of more than 100 years old from notaries – and those of the peripheral administration of the State that were dispersed by other archives, such as the General Administration Archive or the National Historical Archive.

This means that what already existed – the volumes of protocols and those of the old Mortgage Accounting Offices of the province of Madrid – will soon be joined by other funds of historical value from the civil, commercial, movable property, of property and those of the Administration of Justice. “The path begins to put these documents at the service of the investigation,” the deputy director general of Archives and Document Management of the Community, Javier Díez Llamazares, explains to ABC. In principle, the Provincial Historical Archive will share physical space with the place where the Historical Archive of Protocols is located until now – which is integrated into the Provincial –, and where the Regional Archive of the Community of Madrid is also located – which guards the documents generated by the Government and the Madrid autonomous administration and its predecessor institutions –: the building of the old El Águila beer factory. It will remain there until the Ministry of Culture builds its new headquarters, on a plot donated by the Community in Valdebernardo.

Diving into files allows historians, researchers and the curious to come across the daily life of people from other centuries: the private lives of Madrid residents, their occupations, their houses, their household furnishings or their customs. In some cases, with surprises: among the pages of a will, the cards of a satirical deck were found; or a writing included a drawing of a tarasca used in the Corpus Christi procession in 1626.

The volumes of notarial protocols are a source of information about the society of a time, because in the end everyone writes something throughout their life. There are the signatures of Benito Pérez Galdós, Práxedes Mateo Sagasta, the Duchess of Alba Teresa de Silva Álvarez de Toledo, Felipe II, Calderón de la Barca, Beatriz Galindo, Fray Luis de León, Goya, Lope de Vega, and anonymous citizens like Antonio Maseda, sick in the General Hospital who signed his document with the uncertain handwriting of someone who does not master writing; or the altarpiece gilder Martín de Velasco; or the Tangier merchant Mohamed.

The director of the Provincial Historical Archive, Beatriz García Gómez, tours the warehouse where 47,350 volumes of protocols are kept. Some stand out for their special interest: a document by which Miguel de Cervantes transfers the rights to print his work ‘La Galatea’; a letter of freedom from 1652 for a slave, which certifies that he has been freed; the last will of Calderón de la Barca, who died only a few days after signing it; or the judicial action of the year 1802 by which a woman named Celestina withdraws the complaint against her husband, who had tried to drown her and failed thanks to the intervention of a neighbor. “Of this type, apart from the complaint, there are many, also previous ones,” says García Gómez.

In his work, he assures that “there is not a day that a wonder does not appear.” And what remains to be known: “There are about 300 writings per volume, and around 10 percent will be described,” he illustrates. In fact, “every day there are researchers discovering new things” because “there is a lot of virgin information.” The director’s priority is that all this wealth is accessible. And remember that “it is free and open access.”

However, the majority of those who visit it are researchers: “90 percent,” confirms the deputy director general of Archives and Document Management, although there are also cases of individuals searching for deeds or wills of ancestors, “because the value of a writing never ceases. There are specialist lawyers, inheritance seekers, who also visit the Archive. “The history of Madrid at the local level is very important: it was the Court,” he remembers.

Fires, fungi and bacteria

In its role as manager of these documents, the Community also has to take care of their restoration, since “sometimes they are damaged, have been partially burned in fires, or have become wet” or are attacked by fungi and bacteria. In addition to their periodic restoration, the regional government also invests in the high-quality digitization of documents. The Provincial Historical Archive of Madrid will be “the largest in the Spanish network; It will guard more than 25 kilometers of documents,” calculates Díez Llamazares.