National Archive of Catalonia

The National Archive of Catalonia, is a body created by the Generalitat of Catalonia by decree the 28th November 1980. Located in Sant Cugat del Vallès, it is the Catalonia government's official archive, and holds both government and private documents relating to Catalonia's society, politics, economics and history. As government's historical archive, the ANC collects, preserves and disseminates the most relevant records of Catalonia's political and administrative activity of the departments, institutions and companies that make up the Government of Catalonia.HistoryThe great responsibility of developing the Catalan cultural heritage was started by the Commonwealth of Catalonia, and from 1931 on followed by the Ministry of Culture of Catalonia. In that very same year, a proposal for the creation of a National Archive of Catalonia was made by the Archives, Libraries and Fine Arts Conference, but was only in 1936 that a new archive became a reality. Two years before, as a consequence of the transfer of competences from the Government of Spain to the Generalitat, the archive of the Diputació del General's ownership was transferred to Catalan government.On 29 September 1936, a decree signed by Josep Tarradellas, stated that the archive would settle in the Palau Episcopal of Barcelona. Afterwards, in 1938 and within the context of the Spanish Civil War, the National Archive of Catalonia moved to the monastery of Pedralbes, until the documents were spread throughout Catalonia in order to save them from war's threat.