Spanish Cultural Heritage Institute (IPCE) Archive, now online

All these resources which are available on the web page, allow for the reconstruction of almost 80 years of the history of this institute and its predecessors, contributing to the historic study of the cultural heritage of Spain.

The archive contains the files related to intervention processes on tangible and intangible assets carried out since 1961 - reports, accounts and graphic and photographic documents - the War Archive, which gathers together documentation produced by the two institutions during the Spanish Civil War to protect historic Spanish heritage; and the Planoteca, which is the custodian of plans of churches, monasteries, palaces, castles and historic-artistic complexes which were mostly restored between the 1940s and the end of the 1990s.

Ministerio de Cultura y DeporteThe Inventory of Architectonic Heritage (1979 - 1982) is also included in the IPCE Archive, which gathers the information in regulated files of the urban complexes and historical, artistic and cultural elements of intangible heritage collated towards the end of the 1970s.

To facilitate access to this information, the 41, 000 items registered have been separated into four documented groups.

By consulting the intervention projects of tangible and intangible cultural goods, as well as the photographs and plans which accompany them - the oldest dating back to the 1940s - it is possible to visualise the more than 14,000 reports registered of which almost half provide the visualisation and downloading of the files, documents and photographs.

More than 4,000 documents form part of the War Archive

Ministerio de Cultura y DeporteA second documented group offers access to more than 4,000 registered items from the historic fund of the War Archive, the documentation produced by the two institutions created during the Spanish Civil War to protect historic heritage: the Delegate Committee of Confiscation in Madrid of the Republican faction and the Artistic Restoration Service of the Nationalist faction.

The Delegate Committee of Madrid carried out its activity between 1936 and 1939 in the provinces of Madrid, Guadalajara, Toledo, Ciudad Real, Cuenca and Jaen, creating a documentary background principally composed of the seizure of goods, technical reports and other varied administrative documentation.

In turn, the Artistic Restoration Service, created in January 1937, dealt with the recovery and protection of works of art which were found at the front. The basic aim of this service was based on the preparation of reports on the condition of the goods encountered by the agents in terms of improving the content, the list of visits made to various buildings in Madrid and, above all, the minutes and files related to restoring the works to their rightful owners. The vast majority of the documentation corresponds to Madrid and the central region.

6,000 photographs and 21,000 plans

Ministerio de Cultura y DeporteThe collection of photographs of restored works makes up the third documented group consisting of 6,000 items, a collection which documents the restoration process of the most representative works of art in Spain, photographs of oil paintings, sculptures, woven material, gold items and book collections from museums, monasteries, libraries and archives. Finally, this web catalogue provides access in PDF format to more than 21,000 plans making up the Planoteca fund.

Over the coming months, it is expected that the War Archive catalogue will increase with the access to the Balbuena and Vaamonde donations made by Guadalupe Fernández Gascón - daughter of the architect and the president of the Delegate Committee of the Artistic Wealth of Madrid, Roberto Fernández Balbuena - and by Joselino Vaamonde Horcada - son of the architect José Lino Vaamonde, curator of the Prado Museum during the war.

Non official translation