Bureaucracy of the Socialist System

I have finally managed to get the Spanish Ministry of Culture to recognize me officially as a professional historian. This was no mean task, and I did not anticipate the level of bureaucracy with which I have had to tangle.

I won a grant about ten months ago from the Ministry of Culture ($2500) through a visiting scholars program. I thought that would make life in the archives and libraries of Spain easy, but it turns out that the different parts of the Ministry have nothing whatsoever to do with one another.

The Árchivo Historico Nacional (above) is run by the CSIC (Consejo Superior de Investigationes Científicas). Spain, in the nineteenth century European tradition, likes to downplay the distinction between the physical sciences and the social sciences or humanities. Spain has had reputation for difficult-to-access archives. Being aware of this, the CSIC dropped its "proof of credentials" requirements a few years ago. Now, all you need is a valid ID to access any Spanish state archive.

The AHN, in their own literature, suggests this makes them easier to deal with than non-state or church archives. My experiences suggest otherwise. Where Toledo was easy to use, except for the esoteric 11AM-2PM hours, the AHN is a pain. During the summer, they are open an only slightly less weird 9AM-2:30PM. They also have lots of security: ID check when you enter the building, strict rules governing what can and can't be brought into the reading-room, and double or triple signature plus computer-system number control over documents. Everything must be requested through their Windows 98 era computer program, and then you have to wait for up to thirty minutes for the archivist to fetch your documents. Just today they decided that the last requests must be made an hour before closing time. You can also only have three items at a time. They will only allow me access to photos and microfilms of medieval documents; to see the real things, I have to "make a case" for it to the "Constable" of the archives. The constable is also one of the three people you have to see in order to pay for photocopies. My total bill of 3.88 euros required three signatures and visits to two different buildings. Basically the AHN is terrible when compared tothe Cathedral of Toledo, where the archvists freely handout multiple 800 year old documents with no worries, and where I could make my own (expensive) digital photos of anything I wanted, all on the honor system. Unfortunately, the reality is that in two weeks in Toledo I found about eight useful things, and in one week here I have found about twenty.

The Biblioteca Nacional is also its own entity, with no contact with the rest of the Ministry of Culture. I thought, since I had been allowed to use the AHN with relatively little trouble, that getting into the BN would be no problem. I was wrong. They have three security checkpoints, where one has to explain one's business, before you ever get to the actual library. The first step was applying for my card. They needed all kinds of credentials; luckily my advier Dr. Burman anticipated this and made me take some letters, department stationary, and my school ID with me. They needed all that, plus my passport, plus a recent utility bill (to confirm my address), plus a hand-written explanation of why I wanted access to the BN. Forty-five minutes later, they gave me my carné (Spanish word for card is almost the same as the word for meat) de investigad(or). I can't wait to see what happens when I try to go to the Royal Academy next week.