Spanish Archives question for the Colonial Spanish experts

[perdidogringo]

I utilize PARES (Portal de archivos Espanoles) often to research potential sites here in El Dorado. However, sometimes I am surprised at how little comes up when I search for various terms. Recently I talked to a Spaniard who mentioned that "less than 15% of the colonial archives in Seville are available on-line." This surprised me but would make sense considering that I often don't find as much as I'd hope. Does anyone know if this is true?

Portal de Archivos Españoles

 

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[Mackaydon]

perdidogringo,

As you may know, there are 34,000 archives in Spain of which 14,000 belong to the church. The remainder are spread out all over the place. Of the national total, 68 are in the care of the Ministry of Culture of which six are state archives. The largest of these is the GAA which has 160,000 linear meters of holdings, 9 million documents and 15,000 books.
I believe it wasn't until about 1990 that the Ministry embarked on a program to upgrade the archives (including the Archive of the Indies in Seville) by initiating a program to computerize, catalog and create a retrieval system.
I don't expect the process to be completed in my lifetime--even if I were 20 years younger.
Don.

 

[perdidogringo]

Thanks, Don! I did not know that so thanks for taking the time to break it down for me. Wow, just think of all the valuable information I am missing out on here in S.A.!

 

[Mackaydon]

You're not along in that regard, mi amigo.
Don.....

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Anything that's available "on-line" , means that some poor soul had to photo it, text it, post it, add their own text, and so forth. So if you REALLY want a front-row seat to whatever might be there for your research: Volunteer as a docent to archive the dusty-dry legions of paperwork information. That's the only way this stuff ever gets into the on-line ability.