Manuscript Collection of The National Library of Spain
What is the National Manuscript Collection of Spain? History and background
The collection of manuscripts in the National Library of Spain is the most important in the Hispanic area for its size (83.000 items) and importance. The initial fund was formed with the royal collections of the 18th century (Philip V from France and noble libraries in the Succession War). In the same century, the king started to create the project for a national library that could organize all the Spanish culture, adding a lot of important collections through the purchase of different private libraries.
In the 19th century, different manuscripts from royal families, nobility, the Church, and prestigious people in the history of Spain and the World were added to the collection by donations, purchasing, confiscation, or legal tenders.
The key to the yearly increment of the manuscript collection it’s because of the acquiring of forms of manuscripts of all kinds of thematic and prestigious people of all kind of areas that differs between nobility (Marquis of Santillana or the Counts of Benavente), poets (Rafael Morales), philosophers (Roberto Bola) or philologists (Mathilde Pomés) of the Hispanic culture.
