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What is PARES?

An abridged version of Taming PARES by Scott Cave and Ashleigh Dean. If you have any questions, corrections, or technical issues, contact Scott via email or Twitter.

(The Table of Contents below contains internal links for quick navigation)

PARES: What is it good for?

The online Portal de Archivos Españoles, maintained by the Spanish government here, is an excellent resource for information and documentation of public and private archives throughout Spain. Alas for we poor scholars, it is also unbelievably inscrutable, with a search function that can defeat even seasoned users, as one of us found out last year when we arrived in Seville (six years after logging on to PARES for the first time) to discover that virtually every single document we needed had been digitized, but not listed as such.

Inscrutable or not, however, we need PARES, and not just those of us whose research involves Spain directly. Researchers of all areas of Latin America from the late fifteenth century up to independence have not only the entire Archivo General de Indias at their disposal, but significant holdings in the Archivo General de Simancas and the Archivo Histórico Nacional, as well as scattered documents in smaller archives under the PARES umbrella. Habsburg Spain’s domination of early modern Europe makes the PARES system an invaluable resource for documents concerning Portugal, the Spanish Netherlands, Austria, and the Holy Roman Empire for the periods when those crowns were united with Spain, and scholars of the early modern period in general will find tremendous amounts of information on England, France, the Italian states, and other European powers.

This is just Philip II’s full title as it stood in 1580, nothing else. The Habsburgs got around, and that bounty is yours, dear Early Modern Europeanist, to collect in the archives.

Not only is PARES the portal for Spain’s vast collections of documents from the Indies, it also includes resources from Spain’s diplomatic and trade dealings with Africa, Europe, and other American empires, as well as documentation on the Canary Islands, Spain’s first Atlantic outpost. For example, here is a letter granting freedom to a native Canary Islander named Juan de Tineri.

PARES’ resources for the Atlantic World are superb, but let’s not forget the Spanish Lake--the Pacific Ocean. Historians of this particular maritime zone have an invaluable resource in PARES--not just for the history of the Philippines, but for Spanish attempts, successful and otherwise, to conquer Guam, Borneo, China, and Taiwan, as well as their dealings with Japan, Cambodia, India, and other Asian powers. Documentation for the famous Manila Galleons is available here, as well as for the administration of the Philippines via the colony of New Spain. Most of these are in the AGI, but you can also find a few documents in Simancas and the AHN. The colonial period naturally has the majority of the available holdings, but there are materials on the Pacific World for as late as the Second World War.

PARES also contains manuscripts in Latin, Arabic, and Spanish dealing with the medieval period, primarily property contracts but also more diverse sources.

For historians of modern Spain, PARES has excellent resources, particularly for the Spanish Civil War. These are primarily found in the AHN; however, PARES maintains an entirely separate online portal here solely for finding information concerning victims of the Civil War and of political reprisals throughout the fascist era. The AHN is also a useful resource for the Napoleonic wars, the Carlist Wars, both world wars, the First and Second Republics, and other topics relating to post-imperial Spain.

The PARES system also provides a wide range of maps, plans, and other visual materials, most of which (but by no means all) are digitized. Our only direct experience with visual materials in the Spanish archives is in the AGI, which has full or nearly-full digitization and does not permit visual materials to be brought into the sala (reading room). If you are physically present at the AGI, you may look at these items in high definition without watermarks at the sala computers, but otherwise you can access digitized images with watermarks online via the search function (more information on that further on). The good news is that they have recently modified the watermarks for at least some of the images; instead of a huge copyright line across the entire image, it’s now a tasteful red square in the corner:

Archives PARES Draws From

We are both colonial Latin Americanists, and the information we have available concerning specific archives and subsections will reflect that specialization--please contact us if you are knowledgeable about specific holdings outside of our research areas or if our descriptions of holdings could be improved upon!

There are three major national archives and eight smaller archives or sub-collections in the PARES system, not counting monograph collections, libraries, and special exhibits curated under the Ministry’s jurisdiction. Each of them has some level of digitization available via PARES and its Inventario Dinámico, but the depth of information is highly variable and not always easy to find. We have presented a brief overview of the major areas each archive covers, as well as a more in-depth examination of the subsections of the AGI.

Archivo General de Simancas

Early Modernists are likely familiar with the Archivo General de Simancas, but Indies specialists like us can also draw on the rich materials there. Located in a picturesque castle sitting atop the small northern Castilian village of Simancas (within easy bus-riding distance from Valladolid), the archive collects materials dealing with the royal family from the time of Ferdinand and Isabella to 1834. Some of the earliest materials relating to the Indies, or Indies-related lawsuits that came up on appeal, found their way into Simancas due to the Crown's direct involvement. For example, many of the administrative appointments and early decrees regarding the early decades of Hispaniola are there, as is a lawsuit about encomienda labor in 1520s Puerto Rico. For the later period, Simancas has the financial records for monetary donations for the Crusade (yes, this was somehow still happening), as well as records of the Secretary of War dealing with the Indies in the 18th century.

Archivo Histórico Nacional

The most important part of this archive to those interested in the Indies is Ultramar, which contains records from Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico in the 19th century.

To take a broader view, the Archivo Histórico Nacional is based in Madrid and was founded in the nineteenth century as a repository for the records of defunct institutions following the establishment of a liberal state in Spain. The archive is organized into six main sections, the first of which, “Institutiones del Antiguo Regimen,” covers the records of suppressed and defunct state institutions from the late medieval period to Napoleon’s invasion, with a few later holdings as well. Here you can find disbanded early modern councils and chancelleries, the records of the historical University of Alcala, and other historical institutions from the old regime. Inquisition records can also be found here. The second section provides the same service for the War of Independence up to about the Second World War. The third, “Instituciones Eclesiasticas,” is a vast resource for religious history in Spain and its historical territories, covering everything from fourteenth-century records of the Knights Templar to plans for late nineteenth century convent schools.

The remaining three sections deal respectively with small former private archives, special collections (including maps and drawings from the colonial period not available at the AGI), and microfilm reproductions. Two notable resources to be found in these smaller sections are a collection of medieval and early modern seals and the records of the Comintern in Spain. As the information in these sections is highly variable, the best way to find specific information on the holdings of these three smaller sections, as well as for the smaller archives available via PARES, is to search the Inventario Dinámico, which is about as straightforward a resource as PARES possesses and in our experience has often been better than the search function.

Archivo General de Indias

The AGI contains the vast majority of materials related to Spain's administration of their overseas colonies. For the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the AGI often has the only documentation for more tropical or more marginal colonies where documentation has not survived.

There are 60 or so subdivisions in the cataloguing system of the AGI, but these can be reduced down to a few regions and categories. (For a full listing, see the table below) Moving alphabetically, we start with the Audiencias, the local governing bodies for the regional subdivisions of the Spanish empire. These include the Audiencias of:

  • Buenos Aires (the Plata region in general)
  • Caracas (Venezuela)
  • Charcas (Bolivia, Paraguay, and the central interior of South America),
  • Chile
  • Cuzco (highland Peru)
  • Lima (lowland Peru)
  • Filipinas (including Spain's other Pacific holdings and interests)
  • Guadalajara (northern Mexico)
  • Guatemala (including northern Central America)
  • Mexico
  • Panama
  • Santa Fe (Colombia)
  • Santo Domingo (The Spanish Caribbean and Florida)
  • Papeles de Cuba (includes records from Cuba from the 18th century onwards, and also include Florida)

These subdivisions of the archive also include a great deal of the correspondence originating in those Audiencias, as well as local council decisions and royal decrees. More will be said about this later.

Contratación records document the business of the Casa de La Contratación, Spain's governing body for Indies trade and responsible for some of the functions of Indies government. These include internal records and the extensive, mostly digitized, catalogue of immigration records of people coming to and from Seville. Consulados and Arribadas represent similar materials for the later incarnation of the Casa in Cádiz.

Continuing with internal records: Contaduria deals with financial records for the empire; Correos with imperial mail service, Escribanía with petitions and internal investigations; Estado with imperial administration after the Bourbon reforms; Ultramar with late 19th century administration of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines; and Tribunal de Cuentas with finances in roughly the same period. Títulos de Castilla contains papers dealing with the Spanish nobility, and Diversos with the personal archives of specific families or important persons.

Some of the richest materials in the AGI are to be found in Justicia and Indiferente. Indiferente is just what it sounds like: random correspondence, both incoming and outgoing, from the empire, the Casa de la Contratacion, and the Council of the Indies. Only partially indexed and digitized, it is also a frustrating section to work on at times. Our tutorial on determining if something is digitized should help as well. The bundles are organized by time period and by whether the letters were incoming or outgoing. Outgoing records, compiled more or less in real time as letters were sent out, are the most complete and the best preserved.

Justicia preserves lawsuits conducted at the Casa in the 16th century, including numerous lawsuits stemming from conquest expeditions and freedom suits brought by indigenous slaves in the city of Seville. Patronato similarly focuses on the early colonial period, preserving special materials dealing with ethnography, encounter narratives, and voyages of discovery. All of this section has been digitized, and cannot be consulted in person without special permission.

Finally, there is Mapas y Planos, which includes visual materials excised from their surrounding materials. Most of this material is digitized, but not all. This is a great resource when looking for plans and maps, but there are also other drawings included. The entry descriptions for the Mapas y Planos items include the original text that these materials were pulled from. This section is divided regionally and thematically. Consult the table below for a full listing. There is also a small subsection composed of governor's portraits from Cuba, listed as RETRATOSGCG_CUBA.

Anatomy of an Audiencia

There is also another useful organizational and research tool hidden in the long lists of ramos for each audiencia, one that isn't apparent just from searching. The records of each Audiencia are subdivided in rational and predictable ways that make finding documents easy. This structure is based on the "Inventario Dinámico" for the Audiencia de Chile, the smallest audiencia section I could find. It broadly conforms to my experience with Santo Domingo, Panama, and Mexico and demonstrates the kind of organization scheme used. Here is a list of the major sections.

  • [Local Affairs, Lawsuits, and Major Events]
  • Cartas y Expedientes
  • Cartas y Expedientes de Cabildo Secular de [Major City]
  • Cartas y Expedientes de los Gobernadores
  • Cartas y Expedientes de los Obispos de [Bishopric]
  • Cartas y Expedientes de Oficiales Reales
  • Cartas y Expedientes de Personas Eclesiásticas
  • Cartas y Expedientes de Personas Seculares
  • Cartas y Expedientes del Cabildo Secular de [Other Towns]
  • Cartas y Expedientes del Presidente y Oidores de Audiencia
  • Cartas y Expedientes del Virrey
  • Consultas
  • Consultas de [Local Branch of Church or Government]
  • Consultas y Despachos
  • Correspondencia con [Government Officials]
  • Correspondencia de [Government Officials]
  • Cuentas de [Enterprises or Projects]
  • Cuentas de [Locally Assessed Taxes]
  • Cuentas de [Provincial Governments]
  • Expedientes de Confirmaciones de [Benefits or Offices]
  • Expedientes de Residencia de [Spanish Official]
  • Informaciones de Oficio y de Parte
  • Peticiones, Memoriales, etc.
  • Reales Cédulas
  • Registros de Oficio
  • Registros de Parte

These sections are further divided by time spans and regions, but again, this is the general form that Audiencia organization takes.

Other Archives

PARES also includes several smaller archives, with varying levels of digitization and detail available online (the provision about using the Inventorio Dinámico to search through them most effectively applies here too). The “Archivo General de Administration,” located in Alcalá de Henares, is primarily dedicated to post-Civil War government records, while the “Centro Documental de Memoria Historica” focuses on the war and repression under the Francoist regime, including the private papers of prominent figures from both the Republican and Nationalist camps. The records of the former Aragonese crown are kept in their own archive in Barcelona, and the Ministry maintains three official provincial archives in the Basque country, all of which contain documents from the late medieval era to the early twentieth century.

The “Seccion Nobleza” is officially part of the AHN, but it is neither located in Madrid nor included under the AHN’s headings in the search function or in the Inventario Dinámico. This section contains the records and former private archives of noble families in Spain, both extant and extinct, representing over seven hundred peerages throughout the historical empire and the modern state. It is located in Toledo and has its own section on PARES and its own heading in the search function.