Toledo
Late last year I visited for the second time Toledo, the former capital of Spain. It is an absolute gem of a city, a UNESCO world heritage site, and is known as the “City of Three Cultures” due to the influence of Christianity, Judaism and Islam over its history. It is a short train journey from Madrid, but has so much more to see than can be jammed into a day trip. Sited in a loop of the Tagus river, it towers over the plains of Castilla-La Mancha and offers outstanding views from the Alcazar. Pass through Roman walls, via 10th century gates, into a city retaining its Medieval layout. There you will find a plethora of religious buildings including a 10th century mosque, two synagogues and a gothic Cathedral. El Greco lived much of his life in Toledo and there is a museum dedicated to him, as well as a number of his works. The city is known for manchego, marzipan, steel and silver. Don’t be surprised to find shops selling full suits of armour. Anyway, I’m not actually working for the Spanish tourist board, I’m supposed to be writing about archives, but you get the picture – worth a visit.
Hospital de Tavera
On this last trip, we were fortunate enough to be given a tour of the Hospital da Tavera, founded in the 1541 by Cardinal Tavera, the building is an outstanding example of Renaissance architecture. It originally served, as the name suggests, as a hospital for Toledo’s sick, but also as the home and last resting place of the Cardinal and his family. Today is retains a dual purpose, housing an art gallery with works by El Greco, Tintoretto, Zurbarán, and Carreño de Miranda, and others, and also an archive.
The Archive
The archive is also split into two collections, the Nobility Section of the National Historical Archive and the archives of the hospital itself. The former is the national collection of documents, books, pedigrees, portraits, coats of arms, letters etc. of the Spanish noble families and is clearly of huge historical importance. We viewed some beautifully-decorated family pedigrees, displayed in enormous temperature controlled cases, but why the photograph of the Feria family documents? Because the walls were lined with these shelves and as someone who started out working in archives, this makes me itch.
1994
On 1 August 1994, an electrical fault caused a huge fire at Norwich Library. The archives of Norfolk Record Office were housed in the basement of the building. It is often reported that thousands of historic documents were destroyed. That is not actually true, but around 10% of the holdings were water-damaged, while the fire was tackled. Among the lessons learned were that documents and records that were kept in archival boxes were hugely better protected. Today, all of NRO’s 11.5 million documents are stored in such boxes.
Red Tape
You will note that the documents in the picture are held together with pink tape. This is actually where the term “red tape” originates. The King of Spain initiated a system of tying up documents that needed urgent attention in red tape, which he then had to cut through, in order to deal with. This practise was widely adopted by the legal system and today documents to be taken to court are often taped in this way. Why it is pink tape and the phrase is red tape, I have no idea! Anyway, lots of documents received by archives are bound by this pink tape and another of the lessons from the 1994 fire is that if you add water to that pink tape, the colour leaches causing further substantial damage to the documents.
The Itch
Hopefully, this explains why the sight of thousands of documents, stored in shelving protected only by an open metal grill, many of which were tied up with pink tape, made me feel so uncomfortable. One of the missions of staff at Norfolk Record Office is to spread the word about the best way to preserve our historic documents for future generations. Let’s hope the word spreads to Toledo before too long.
More Photographs
If you would like to see more photographs of the hospital and archive, check out my facebook page Joanne Penn Genealogy.
