Madrid, Apr 10 (EFE) .- The National Library of Spain (BNE) will sign a return agreement with the Abbey of Valle de los Caídos in the coming weeks that will allow this institution to recover more than 400 books that were delivered there in 1961 .
The signing of the agreement will take place after concluding “a rigorous investigation” that began in 2018 and that has allowed to discover in the Collective Catalog of Bibliographic Heritage (CCPB) a series of copies, located in the library of the Abadía del Valle de los Caídos, In which there is a stamp of property of the National Library of Spain.
The verification of records by the department of Manuscripts, Incunabula and Rare of the BNE allowed locating in the Archive of the institution a record, dated April 14, 1961, by which the Library, then National Library, delivered to the abbot of the Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos a batch of 494 books from the 16th to the 19th centuries.
According to the research work, in addition to having the old signature and the seal of the BNE, in the books currently housed in the Valley of the Fallen there is information on provenances that directly indicate their relationship with the National Library of Spain, explains this organization in a statement.
For example, references such as B. de U. (Biblioteca de Uclés), Biblioteca Real, Biblioteca Carderera, some signature BU or stamp from the Ultramar Library, the Library of Agustín Durán, Pascual de Gayangos, exlibris of Cayetano Alberto de la Barrera or legacy Hartzenbusch, among others.
Some titles consist of several volumes, so the final list of recovered copies for the BNE’s funds would exceed 900 volumes; Of the total of 494 titles on the delivery list, 37 could not be located in the CCPB.
The report commissioned by the National Library to the State Bar to determine the ownership of the funds dictates that it is “property of the Spanish Historical Heritage owned by the National Library of Spain, and they are property of public domain, inalienable, imprescriptible and Unattachable, so their deposit in the Library of the Valley of the Fallen could only have been made as a loan or free loan “.
“These books constitute a set of great patrimonial value, the departure of which represented a significant loss for the BNE’s collections, especially with regard to some unique copies,” says the Library.
The decision to sign the repayment agreement came at a recent meeting in which the prior of the Abbey, Santiago Cantera; the director of the Library, Ana Santos; and the president of National Heritage, Llanos Castellanos.
In the coming weeks, personnel from the Department of Manuscripts, Incunabula and Rare of the National Library will begin the definitive comparison of the inventory with the physical copies.
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