Spelunking through the AGA

Research in the Archivo General de Administración is a collaborative effort

Many years ago (in 2006, if I remember correctly) I bicycled from Ghent to Amsterdam and back, on a route of more or less my own devising. One of the subtle differences in cycle culture that I noticed in Belgium and Holland (or more accurately in neighboring Flanders and Zeeland) had to do with signage. In the Netherlands, the bicycle paths were all (at least in theory) extremely well marked, and anyone with a map or a general sense of geography could barely get lost, which meant that those of us poor fools who stopped at crossroads had people whiz past us at speed on their bikes. In Flanders, the signs were considerably less comprehensive, but it was impossible to stop for more than thirty seconds at a crossing without another bike rolling to a stop beside you and saying (usually in English) “Are you lost? Can I help you find something?” The better signs meant less informal assistance between cyclists, and the more cryptic indications meant a friendlier camaraderie among those who were trying to puzzle them out.

I have found that the Archivo General de Administración is like Flanders to the nth degree. The finding aids are cryptic to the point of unintelligibility even when they are not frankly inaccurate. But the staff are lovely and helpful, and I have the advantage of working alongside a fellow researcher (and former Fulbrighter), who is doing something completely unrelated. Yesterday she came over and knelt by my desk, whispering, “I think I've found some associations that might be useful for you” and provided me with a bunch of box call numbers. In return, I have noted the boxes where her subject pops up, and have been carefully passing the information along to her. And meanwhile the friendly archivists look at the call numbers and say “¿estás interesada en prensa?” based purely on the boxes you are requesting, and their memories of previous call requests. (My former-Fulbright-friend said she was greeted on her arrival with another grant this year with the assurance that “the good news is that no one has looked at your boxes since you were here two years ago. The bad news is they're still not better catalogued.”) All of us are wandering in a labyrinthine collection of tens of thousands of boxes with probably millions of individual documents that would make Jorge Luis Borges himself dizzy, like his bibliotecarios de Babel we leave little flare guns and notes and helpful hints for each other, which makes research at once slower and less productive, but tremendously more fun and social.

That being said, for all those of you who want to know, no, I still haven't found my authors yet. Today I got pulled into a digression given a promising finding aid description that said it was correspondencia con el extranjero of the sección de turismo. It also (sadly) has a box with letters with correspondents A-P for 1954, and another box of correspondents with last names R-Z for 1953. Don't ask me what happened to the other half of the alphabet for each year. Since what I would be looking for is someone surnamed W in 1954 I knew it was a faint hope, but it was interesting to see what was there. In the days before internet (and apparently before widespread travel guides like Lonely Planet or Rough Guide), all sorts of people wrote to the Spanish Government Tourist Office (Calle Medinaceli 2, Madrid) requesting information about things like local festivals, and good routes for a two week tour, and hotel listings and so on. The Spanish Tourist Office had printed form letters in Spanish, English, French, and eventually German saying essentially “Dear _____: Thank you for your inquiry. We are enclosing tourist brochures and maps which will hopefully answer your questions. Regulations about passports and currency are sent under separate cover. Sincerely, etc.” French and Belgians wrote in French. Americans and English wrote in English. Dutch people wrote usually either in French or English, and occasionally in Spanish, and Germans wrote far more often in Spanish than in any other language. The odd Portuguese and Italian query got answered in Spanish, because Spaniards have the lurking suspicion that Portuguese and Italians are just being difficult and that (as Mark Twain once said of the English) if you woke them up suddenly at three in the morning they would forget and speak properly. The American queries are an unexpected record of empire, as while some of them do come from the US, there are also quite a number from members of the military (sometimes on letterhead which I suspect was purloined for non-official purposes). Logically there are quite a few from Germany (mostly EURCOM in Heidelberg), where one young man wrote cheerfully that he needed to know “what do I need to enter Spain, passport, or visa, or army orders, or what?” (I love the “or what?” It's such 1950s puppy-dog informality. This to an office where the internal memos still have officials referring to each other as “V.I.” - “vuestra ilustrísima” - and signing off “Dios le guarde por muchos años!” Actually, the closing of Spanish letters is funny too, since there's is almost nothing between “May God preserve you for many years” and “recibe un fuerte abrazo de su amigo.” This is the verbal equivalent of passing straight from heraldic badges to smiley face emoticons with no imagery in between. Spaniards must have thought the English custom of “Sincerely” or “Very Truly Yours” was rather odd.) There is also a letter from Tokyo, from someone obviously heading home after a few years abroad, and a very polite one from a corporal in Seoul, dated in the fall of 1953, asking for information for a trip to Spain for a few weeks in July of 1954. Having faithfully watched M*A*S*H* for many years, I thought it was rather sweet that this young man was planning his trip to Europe (and probably thence home) so many months in advance, and I rather hope that he survived the rest of his time in Korea to travel around Spain.

I have a commitment to have lunch with a professor at the Complutense tomorrow, so I will not be going to Alcalá, which I must admit is something of a relief, as traveling for the better part of two hours each way eats up a lot of time that could be productively used in other pursuits. However, I will have an enforced holiday next week, as Spaniards celebrate May 1 along with the rest of Europe (presumably to commemorate the utter and total defeat of the working class in 1939, as Camus famously noted), and then (because why have one holiday when you can have two?) they also celebrate May 2, as the beginning of the “War of Independence” (which if you've seen Goya's matching paintings the 2 de Mayo and the 3 de Mayo in the Prado is basically the thorough and total defeat of the working class in 1808). In Madrid, the fiesta de San Isidro is also technically the 2 May, so a friend has invited me to come and celebrate in Malasaña (home of the famous Plaza 2 de Mayo), because in addition to the “Semana de Black Friday” in November, Madrileños celebrate the 2 of May starting on April 27 (and running through May 2, inclusive). As the puente means that the archives in Alcalá will be closed two days next week (as will the Complutense, the yoga studio, the pool, etc.) I will have a little enforced rest, which I hope to use to get started on my chapter, which now has an outline, and just needs a few weeks of seclusion to finish. I do like shutting myself up on holidays. It's so productive.

Still, on Monday of next week I will continue spelunking through the archives, comparing my maps with those of earlier intrepid explorers. I don't have much hope of finding gems in the darkness, but it's nice exercise, and you never know. More to come soon, when there is more news.