The Archives of the Crown of Aragon: latest news

In recent years an ambitious program of action has been developed regarding the centre's most valuable documentation, especially the Registers of the Royal Chancellery (description, restoration and reprography through microfilm or digitalisation). All the digitised ones from the last twenty years can be consulted online, since the resulting image has been linked to the revised description in the Portal of Spanish Archives (PARES) . During this year 2023, a boost is being given to the project.

At present, the information introduced to PARES in previous years through a bulk upload of existing manuscript and typed description tools is being reviewed. In parallel, new descriptions are being added and existing ones expanded, following the international ISAD(G) and ISAAR(CPF) standards, as well as the rules for the creation of access points of the General Sub-directorate of State Archives.

The descriptions and digital reproductions of the oldest parchments in the archive (fund of the Royal Chancellery) have just been published on the PARES portal. There are more than 500 units dated between the middle of the 9th century and the first third of the 11th. According to the order of the 18th century, they are distributed by the periods of government of the first seven counts of Barcelona, ​​from Wilfred the Hairy to Berenguer Ramon I. The parchments have different origins. Some belonged to the counts of Barcelona, and others to the counts of Pallars Jussà, before that county was incorporated into the Crown of Aragon, at the end of the 12th century. Most, however, come from the monastery of Sant Joan de les Abadesses and entered the archive in the 17th century as a result of a lawsuit. Among the documents, some oaths of fidelity stand out that are among the oldest Romance testimonies in the territory, such as the one that Radulf Oriol made to Count Ramon de Pallars at the beginning of the 11th century. Over the next few months, the project to describe the parchments from the county period will continue until the end of Ramón Berenguer IV.