In the 1700's, King Carlos III, wanted to make sure that an accurate history of Spain's part in developing America was kept. So, he requested the creation of a central archive of all documents (trade, engineering, maps, plans, treaties, ....) concerning relations with Spain and America be collected into a single place. The General Archive of the Indies is in a beautiful building that has had a long history before becoming the General Archive - it now contains about 80 million pages of documents and about 8000 maps and drawings. Researchers from all over the world come to spend time looking at high quality copies of the documents (researchers are not allowed to touch the originals in order to preserve them). For the last few decades, major progress has been made in digitizing some of the most important documents, but they are far from having all 80 million pages in any kind of searchable digital format.
One of the famous documents kept in the archive is the treaty with Portugal that outlines what part of South America will be a Portuguese colony (Brazil) and what part will be Spanish (the rest). The place is part "research library" part "museum". I will certainly go back when I have more time. I really enjoyed it. There is an entire hall highlighting documents and models related to engineering plans for infrastructure (city planning, bridges, ....)
After the Archives visit, I headed back to class (3 students).
After class, I spent about an hour helping a student from another class move her things across town. I carried on small bag, one other student (from Brazil) carried one small bag and Wanda (the girl who was moving) carried a HUGE backpack.
After moving, the three of us went to a restaurant for tapas. We shared 6 tapas - which turned out to be just a little too much food - but we were troopers and ate it all.
By the time we finished, it was almost 11:30 and time to head home.
