Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish painter and ceramicist born in Barcelona. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona in 1975, another, the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, was established in his adoptive city of Palma de Mallorca in 1981. Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, a manifestation of Catalan pride. In numerous interviews dating from the 1930s onwards, Miró expressed contempt for conventional painting methods as a way of supporting bourgeois society, declared an "assassination of painting" in favour of upsetting the visual elements of established painting. Born into a family of a goldsmith and a watchmaker, Miró grew up in the Barri Gòtic neighborhood of Barcelona; the Miró surname indicates Jewish roots. His father was Miquel Miró Adzerias and his mother was Dolors Ferrà, he began drawing classes at the age of seven at a private school at Carrer del Regomir 13, a medieval mansion.
To the dismay of his father, he enrolled at the fine art academy at La Llotja in 1907. He studied at the Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc and he had his first solo show in 1918 at the Galeries Dalmau, where his work was ridiculed and defaced. Inspired by Fauve and Cubist exhibitions in Barcelona and abroad, Miró was drawn towards the arts community, gathering in Montparnasse and in 1920 moved to Paris, but continued to spend his summers in Catalonia. Miró went to business school as well as art school, he began his working career as a clerk when he was a teenager, although he abandoned the business world for art after suffering a nervous breakdown. His early art, like that of the influenced Fauves and Cubists, was inspired by Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne; the resemblance of Miró's work to that of the intermediate generation of the avant-garde has led scholars to dub this period his Catalan Fauvist period. A few years after Miró's 1918 Barcelona solo exhibition, he settled in Paris where he finished a number of paintings that he had begun on his parents’ summer home and farm in Mont-roig del Camp.
One such painting, The Farm, showed a transition to a more individual style of painting and certain nationalistic qualities. Ernest Hemingway, who purchased the piece, compared the artistic accomplishment to James Joyce's Ulysses and described it by saying, "It has in it all that you feel about Spain when you are there and all that you feel when you are away and cannot go there. No one else has been able to paint these two opposing things." Miró annually returned to Mont-roig and developed a symbolism and nationalism that would stick with him throughout his career. Two of Miró's first works classified as Surrealist, Catalan Landscape and The Tilled Field, employ the symbolic language, to dominate the art of the next decade. Josep Dalmau arranged Miró's first Parisian solo exhibition, at Galerie la Licorne in 1921. In 1924, Miró joined the Surrealist group; the symbolic and poetic nature of Miró's work, as well as the dualities and contradictions inherent to it, fit well within the context of dream-like automatism espoused by the group.
Much of Miró's work lost the cluttered chaotic lack of focus that had defined his work thus far, he experimented with collage and the process of painting within his work so as to reject the framing that traditional painting provided. This antagonistic attitude towards painting manifested itself when Miró referred to his work in 1924 ambiguously as "x" in a letter to poet friend Michel Leiris; the paintings that came out of this period were dubbed Miró's dream paintings. Miró did not abandon subject matter, though. Despite the Surrealist automatic techniques that he employed extensively in the 1920s, sketches show that his work was the result of a methodical process. Miró's work dipped into non-objectivity, maintaining a symbolic, schematic language; this was most prominent in the repeated Head of a Catalan Peasant series of 1924 to 1925. In 1926, he collaborated with Max Ernst on designs for ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev. With Miró's help, Ernst pioneered the technique of grattage, in which one trowels pigment onto a canvas scrapes it away.
Miró returned to a more representational form of painting with The Dutch Interiors of 1928. Crafted after works by Hendrik Martenszoon Sorgh and Jan Steen seen as postcard reproductions, the paintings reveal the influence of a trip to Holland taken by the artist; these paintings share more in common with Tilled Field or Harlequin's Carnival than with the minimalistic dream paintings produced a few years earlier. Miró married Pilar Juncosa in Palma on 12 October 1929, their daughter, María Dolores Miró, was born on 17 July 1930. In 1931, Pierre Matisse opened an art gallery in New York City; the Pierre Matisse Gallery became an influential part of the Modern art movement in America. From the outset Matisse represented Joan Miró and introduced his work to the United States market by exhibiting Miró's work in New York; until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Miró habitually returned to Spain in the summers. Once the war began, he was unable to return home. Unlike many of his surrealist contemporaries, Miró had preferred to stay away from explicitly political commentary in his work.
Though a sense of nationalism pervaded his earliest surreal landscapes and Head of a Catalan Peasant, it was not until Spain's Republican government commissioned him to paint the mural, The Reaper, for the Spanis
Cubism
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, inspired related movements in music and architecture. Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century; the term is broadly used in association with a wide variety of art produced in Paris during the 1910s and throughout the 1920s. The movement was pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, joined by Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, Fernand Léger. One primary influence that led to Cubism was the representation of three-dimensional form in the late works of Paul Cézanne. A retrospective of Cézanne's paintings had been held at the Salon d'Automne of 1904, current works were displayed at the 1905 and 1906 Salon d'Automne, followed by two commemorative retrospectives after his death in 1907. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassembled in an abstracted form—instead of depicting objects from a single viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context.
In France, offshoots of Cubism developed, including Orphism, Abstract art and Purism. The impact of Cubism was wide-ranging. In other countries Futurism, Dada, Constructivism, De Stijl and Art Deco developed in response to Cubism. Early Futurist paintings hold in common with Cubism the fusing of the past and the present, the representation of different views of the subject pictured at the same time called multiple perspective, simultaneity or multiplicity, while Constructivism was influenced by Picasso's technique of constructing sculpture from separate elements. Other common threads between these disparate movements include the faceting or simplification of geometric forms, the association of mechanization and modern life. Historians have divided the history of Cubism into phases. In one scheme, the first phase of Cubism, known as Analytic Cubism, a phrase coined by Juan Gris a posteriori, was both radical and influential as a short but significant art movement between 1910 and 1912 in France.
A second phase, Synthetic Cubism, remained vital until around 1919, when the Surrealist movement gained popularity. English art historian Douglas Cooper proposed another scheme, describing three phases of Cubism in his book, The Cubist Epoch. According to Cooper there was "Early Cubism", when the movement was developed in the studios of Picasso and Braque. Douglas Cooper's restrictive use of these terms to distinguish the work of Braque, Gris and Léger implied an intentional value judgement. Cubism burgeoned between 1907 and 1911. Pablo Picasso's 1907 painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon has been considered a proto-Cubist work. In 1908, in his review of Georges Braque's exhibition at Kahnweiler's gallery, the critic Louis Vauxcelles called Braque a daring man who despises form, "reducing everything, places and a figures and houses, to geometric schemas, to cubes". Vauxcelles recounted how Matisse told him at the time, "Braque has just sent in a painting made of little cubes"; the critic Charles Morice spoke of Braque's little cubes.
The motif of the viaduct at l'Estaque had inspired Braque to produce three paintings marked by the simplification of form and deconstruction of perspective. Georges Braque's 1908 Houses at L’Estaque prompted Vauxcelles, in Gil Blas, 25 March 1909, to refer to bizarreries cubiques. Gertrude Stein referred to landscapes made by Picasso in 1909, such as Reservoir at Horta de Ebro, as the first Cubist paintings; the first organized group exhibition by Cubists took place at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris during the spring of 1911 in a room called'Salle 41'. By 1911 Picasso was recognized as the inventor of Cubism, while Braque's importance and precedence was argued with respect to his treatment of space and mass in the L’Estaque landscapes, but "this view of Cubism is associated with a distinctly restrictive definition of which artists are properly to be called Cubists," wrote the art historian Christopher Green: "Marginalizing the contribution of the artists who exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1911 "The assertion that the Cubist depiction of space, mass and volume supports the flatness of the canvas was made by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler as early as 1920, but it was subject to criticism in the 1950s and 1960s by Clement Greenberg.
Contemporary views of Cubism are complex, formed to some extent in response to the "Salle 41" Cubists, whose methods were too distinct from those of Picasso and Braque to be considered secondary to them. Alternative interpretations of Cubism have therefore developed. Wider views of Cubism include artists who were associated with the "Salle 41" artists, e.g. Francis Picabia.
Georges Braque
Georges Braque was a major 20th-century French painter, draughtsman and sculptor. His most important contributions to the history of art were in his alliance with Fauvism from 1906, the role he played in the development of Cubism. Braque’s work between 1908 and 1912 is associated with that of his colleague Pablo Picasso, their respective Cubist works were indistinguishable for many years, yet the quiet nature of Braque was eclipsed by the fame and notoriety of Picasso. Georges Braque was born on 13 May 1882 in Val-d'Oise, he grew up in Le Havre and trained to be a house painter and decorator like his father and grandfather. However, he studied artistic painting during evenings at the École des Beaux-Arts, in Le Havre, from about 1897 to 1899. In Paris, he apprenticed with a decorator and was awarded his certificate in 1902; the next year, he attended the Académie Humbert in Paris, painted there until 1904. It was here that he met Francis Picabia. Braque's earliest works were impressionistic, but after seeing the work exhibited by the artistic group known as the "Fauves" in 1905, he adopted a Fauvist style.
The Fauves, a group that included Henri Matisse and André Derain among others, used brilliant colors to represent emotional response. Braque worked most with the artists Raoul Dufy and Othon Friesz, who shared Braque's hometown of Le Havre, to develop a somewhat more subdued Fauvist style. In 1906, Braque traveled with Friesz to L'Estaque, to Antwerp, home to Le Havre to paint. In May 1907, he exhibited works of the Fauve style in the Salon des Indépendants; the same year, Braque's style began a slow evolution as he became influenced by Paul Cézanne who had died in 1906 and whose works were exhibited in Paris for the first time in a large-scale, museum-like retrospective in September 1907. The 1907 Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne affected the avant-garde artists of Paris, resulting in the advent of Cubism. Braque's paintings of 1908–1912 reflected his new interest in geometry and simultaneous perspective, he conducted an intense study of the effects of light and perspective and the technical means that painters use to represent these effects, seeming to question the most standard of artistic conventions.
In his village scenes, for example, Braque reduced an architectural structure to a geometric form approximating a cube, yet rendered its shading so that it looked both flat and three-dimensional by fragmenting the image. He showed this in the painting Houses at l'Estaque. Beginning in 1909, Braque began to work with Pablo Picasso, developing a similar proto-Cubist style of painting. At the time, Pablo Picasso was influenced by Gauguin, Cézanne, African masks and Iberian sculpture while Braque was interested in developing Cézanne's ideas of multiple perspectives. “A comparison of the works of Picasso and Braque during 1908 reveals that the effect of his encounter with Picasso was more to accelerate and intensify Braque’s exploration of Cézanne’s ideas, rather than to divert his thinking in any essential way.” Braque’s essential subject is the ordinary objects he has known forever. Picasso celebrates animation. Thus, the invention of Cubism was a joint effort between Picasso and Braque residents of Montmartre, Paris.
These artists were the style's main innovators. After meeting in October or November 1907, Braque and Picasso, in particular, began working on the development of Cubism in 1908. Both artists produced paintings of monochromatic color and complex patterns of faceted form, now termed Analytic Cubism. A decisive time of its development occurred during the summer of 1911, when Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso painted side by side in Céret in the French Pyrenees, each artist producing paintings that are difficult—sometimes impossible—to distinguish from those of the other. In 1912, they began to experiment with collage and Braque invented the papier collé technique. On 14 November 1908, the French art critic Louis Vauxcelles, in his review of Georges Braque's exhibition at Kahnweiler's gallery called Braque a daring man who despises form, "reducing everything, places and a figures and houses, to geometric schemas, to cubes". Vauxcelles, on 25 March 1909, used the terms "bizarreries cubiques" after seeing a painting by Braque at the Salon des Indépendants.
The term'Cubism', first pronounced in 1911 with reference to artists exhibiting at the Salon des Indépendants gained wide use but Picasso and Braque did not adopt it initially. Art historian Ernst Gombrich described Cubism as "the most radical attempt to stamp out ambiguity and to enforce one reading of the picture—that of a man-made construction, a colored canvas." The Cubist style spread throughout Paris and Europe. The two artists' productive collaboration continued and they worked together until the beginning of World War I in 1914, when Braque enlisted with the French Army. In May 1915, Braque received a severe head injury in battle at Carency and suffered temporary blindness, he was trepanned, required a long period of recuperation. The things that Picasso and I said to one another during those years will never be said again, if they were, no one would understand them anymore, it was like being roped together on a mountain. Braque resumed painting in late 1916. Working alone, he began to moderate the harsh abstraction of cubism.
He developed a more personal style characterized by brilliant color, textured surfaces, and—after his relocation to the Normandy seacoast—the reappearance of the human figure. He painted many still life subjects during this time, maintaining his e
Section d'Or
The Section d'Or known as Groupe de Puteaux, was a collective of painters, sculptors and critics associated with Cubism and Orphism. Based in the Parisian suburbs, the group held regular meetings at the home of the Duchamp brothers in Puteaux and at the studio of Albert Gleizes in Courbevoie. Active from 1911 to around 1914, members of the collective came to prominence in the wake of their controversial showing at the Salon des Indépendants in the spring of 1911; this showing by Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Robert Delaunay, Henri le Fauconnier, Fernand Léger and Marie Laurencin, created a scandal that brought Cubism to the attention of the general public for the first time. The Salon de la Section d'Or, held October 1912—the largest and most important public showing of Cubist works prior to World War I—exposed Cubism to a wider audience still. After the war, with support given by the dealer Léonce Rosenberg, Cubism returned to the front line of Parisian artistic activity. Various elements of the Groupe de Puteaux would mount two more large-scale Section d'Or exhibitions, in 1920 and in 1925, with the goal of revealing the complete process of transformation and renewal that had transpired since the onset of Cubism.
The group seems to have adopted the name "Section d'Or" as both an homage to the mathematical harmony associated with Georges Seurat, to distinguish themselves from the narrower style of Cubism developed in parallel by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in the Montmartre quarter of Paris. In addition, the name was to highlight that Cubism, rather than being an isolated art-form, represented the continuation of a grand tradition: indeed, the golden ratio, or golden section had fascinated Western intellectuals of diverse interests for at least 2,400 years; the Puteaux Group organized their first exhibition under the name Salon de la Section d'Or at the Galerie La Boétie in Paris, October 1912. Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, in preparation for the Salon de la Section d'Or, published a major defense of Cubism, resulting in the first theoretical essay on the new movement, entitled Du "Cubisme". Following the 1911 Salon exhibitions the group formed by Le Fauconnier, Gleizes, Léger and R. Delaunay expanded to include several other artists.
František Kupka had lived in Puteaux for several years in the same complex as Jacques Villon. Francis Picabia was introduced to the circle by Guillaume Apollinaire with whom he had become friendly. Most was the contact established with Metzinger and the Duchamp brothers, who exhibited under the names of Jacques Villon, Marcel Duchamp and Duchamp-Villon; the opening address was given by Apollinaire. The participation of many of these artists in the formation of Les Artistes de Passy in October 1912 was an attempt to transform the Passy district of Paris into yet another art-centre; the idea of the Section d'Or originated in the course of conversations between Gleizes and Jacques Villon. The group's title was suggested by Villon, after reading a 1910 translation of Leonardo da Vinci's Trattato della Pittura by Joséphin Péladan. Peladan attached great mystical significance to the golden section, other similar geometric configurations. For Villon, this symbolized his belief in order and the significance of mathematical proportions, because it reflected patterns and relationships occurring in nature.
Jean Metzinger and the Duchamp brothers were passionately interested in mathematics. Jean Metzinger, Juan Gris and Marcel Duchamp at this time were associates of Maurice Princet, an amateur mathematician credited for introducing profound and rational scientific arguments into Cubist discussions; the name La Section d'Or represented a continuity with past traditions and current trends in related fields, while leaving open future developments in the arts. Art historian Daniel Robbins argued that in addition to referencing the mathematical golden section, the term associated with the Salon Cubists refers to the name of the earlier Bandeaux d'Or group, with which Albert Gleizes and other former members of the Abbaye de Créteil had been involved; the 1912 Salon de la Section d'Or was arguably the most important pre-World War. In the previous year the Cubists and a large number of their associates had exhibited at the Galerie de l'Art Contemporain under the auspices of the Société Normande de Peinture Moderne.
This exhibition had received some attention in the press, though due to the diversity of the works presented it had been referred to as an exposition des fauves et cubistes. The Salon de la Section d'Or, was accepted as being Cubist in nature. Over 200 works were displayed, the fact that many of the artists showed artworks representative of their development from 1909 to 1912 gave the exhibition the allure of a Cubist retrospective. Though the Salle 41 Cubists had been surprised by the impassioned reactions generated by the 1911 Salon des Indépendants showing, they appear to have been eager to attract as much attention as possible with the Salon de la Section d'Or; the inauguration was held from nine until midnight, for which the onl
French Foreign Legion
The French Foreign Legion is a military service branch of the French Army established in 1831. Legionnaires are trained infantry soldiers and the Legion is unique in that it was, continues to be, open to foreign recruits willing to serve in the French Armed Forces; when it was founded, the French Foreign Legion was not unique. Commanded by French officers, it is open to French citizens, who amounted to 24% of the recruits in 2007; the Foreign Legion is today known as a unit whose training focuses on traditional military skills and on its strong esprit de corps, as its men come from different countries with different cultures. This is a way to strengthen them enough to work as a team. Training is described as not only physically challenging, but very stressful psychologically. French citizenship may be applied for after three years' service; the Legion is the only part of the French military that does not swear allegiance to France, but to the Foreign Legion itself. Any soldier who becomes injured during a battle for France can apply to be a French citizen under a provision known as "Français par le sang versé".
As of 2008, members come from 140 countries. Since 1831, the Legion has suffered the loss of nearly 40,000 men on active service in France, Morocco, Madagascar, West Africa, Italy, the Crimea, Indo-China, Loyada, Chad, Zaïre, Central Africa, Kuwait, Djibouti, former Yugoslavia, Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Mali and others; the French Foreign Legion was used to protect and expand the French colonial empire during the 19th century. The Foreign Legion was stationed only in Algeria, where it took part in the pacification and development of the colony. Subsequently, the Foreign Legion was deployed in a number of conflicts, including the First Carlist War in 1835, the Crimean War in 1854, the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859, the French intervention in Mexico in 1863, the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, the Tonkin Campaign and Sino-French War in 1883, supporting growth of the French colonial empire in Sub-Saharan Africa and pacifying Algeria, the Second Franco-Dahomean War in 1892, the Second Madagascar expedition in 1895, the Mandingo Wars in 1894.
In World War I, the Foreign Legion fought in many critical battles on the Western Front. It played a smaller role in World War II than in World War I, though having a part in the Norwegian and North African campaigns. During the First Indochina War, the Foreign Legion saw; the FFL lost a large number of men in the catastrophic Battle of Dien Bien Phu. During the Algerian War of Independence, the Foreign Legion came close to being disbanded after some officers and the decorated 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment took part in the Generals' putsch. Operations during this period included the Suez Crisis, the Battle of Algiers and various offensives launched by General Maurice Challe including Operations Oranie and Jumelles. In the 1960s and 1970s, Legion regiments had additional roles in sending units as a rapid deployment force to preserve French interests – in its former African colonies and in other nations as well; some notable operations include: the Chadian–Libyan conflict in 1969–1972, 1978–1979, 1983–1987.
In 1981, the 1st Foreign Regiment and Foreign Legion regiments partook to the Multinational Force in Lebanon. In 1990, Foreign Legion regiments were sent to the Persian Gulf and took part in Opération Daguet, part of Division Daguet. Following the Gulf War in the 1990s, the Foreign Legion helped with the evacuation of French citizens and foreigners in Rwanda and Zaire; the Foreign Legion was deployed in Cambodia, Sarajevo and Herzegovina. In the mid- to late-1990s, the Foreign Legion was deployed in the Central African Republic, Congo-Brazzaville and in Kosovo; the Foreign Legion took part in operations in Rwanda in 1990–1994. In the 2000s, the Foreign Legion was deployed in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, Operation Licorne in Ivory Coast, the EUFOR Tchad/RCA in Chad, Operation Serval in the Northern Mali conflict. Other countries have tried to emulate the French Foreign Legion model; the contemporary French Foreign Legion relates the most to that of the Spanish Legion. The French Foreign Legion was created by Louis Philippe, the King of the French, on 10 March 1831 from the foreign regiments of the Kingdom of France.
Recruits included soldiers from the disbanded Swiss and German foreign regiments of the Bourbon monarchy. The Royal Ordinance for the establishment of the new regiment specified that the foreigners recruited could only serve outside France; the French expeditionary force that had occupied Algiers in 1830 was in need of reinforcements and the Legion was accordingly transferred by sea in detachments from Toulon to Algeria. The Foreign Legion was used, as part of the Armée d'Afrique, to protect and expand the French colonial empire during the 19th century, but it fought in all French wars including the Franco-Prussian War, World War I and World War II; the Foreign Legion has remained an important part of the French Army and sea transport protected by the French Navy, surviving three Republics, the Second F
Biblioteca Nacional de España
The Biblioteca Nacional de España is a major public library, the largest in Spain, one of the largest in the world. It is located on the Paseo de Recoletos; the library was founded by King Philip V in 1712 as the Palace Public Library. The Royal Letters Patent that he granted, the predecessor of the current legal deposit requirement, made it mandatory for printers to submit a copy of every book printed in Spain to the library. In 1836, the library's status as Crown property was revoked and ownership was transferred to the Ministry of Governance. At the same time, it was renamed the Biblioteca Nacional. During the 19th century, confiscations and donations enabled the Biblioteca Nacional to acquire the majority of the antique and valuable books that it holds. In 1892 the building was used to host the Historical American Exposition. On March 16, 1896, the Biblioteca Nacional opened to the public in the same building in which it is housed and included a vast Reading Room on the main floor designed to hold 320 readers.
In 1931 the Reading Room was reorganised, providing it with a major collection of reference works, the General Reading Room was created to cater for students and general readers. During the Spanish Civil War close to 500,000 volumes were collected by the Confiscation Committee and stored in the Biblioteca Nacional to safeguard works of art and books held until in religious establishments and private houses. During the 20th century numerous modifications were made to the building to adapt its rooms and repositories to its expanding collections, to the growing volume of material received following the modification to the Legal Deposit requirement in 1958, to the numerous works purchased by the library. Among this building work, some of the most noteworthy changes were the alterations made in 1955 to triple the capacity of the library's repositories, those started in 1986 and completed in 2000, which led to the creation of the new building in Alcalá de Henares and complete remodelling of the building on Paseo de Recoletos, Madrid.
In 1986, when Spain's main bibliographic institutions - the National Newspaper Library, the Spanish Bibliographic Institute and the Centre for Documentary and Bibliographic Treasures - were incorporated into the Biblioteca Nacional, the library was established as the State Repository of Spain's Cultural Memory, making all of Spain's bibliographic output on any media available to the Spanish Library System and national and international researchers and cultural and educational institutions. In 1990 it was made an Autonomous Entity attached to the Ministry of Culture; the Madrid premises are shared with the National Archaeological Museum. The Biblioteca Nacional is Spain's highest library institution and is head of the Spanish Library System; as the country's national library, it is the centre responsible for identifying, preserving and disseminating information about Spain's documentary heritage, it aspires to be an essential point of reference for research into Spanish culture. In accordance with its Articles of Association, passed by Royal Decree 1581/1991 of October 31, 1991, its principal functions are to: Compile and conserve bibliographic archives produced in any language of the Spanish state, or any other language, for the purposes of research and information.
Promote research through the study and reproduction of its bibliographic archive. Disseminate information on Spain's bibliographic output based on the entries received through the legal deposit requirement; the library's collection consists of more than 26,000,000 items, including 15,000,000 books and other printed materials, 4,500,000 graphic materials, 600,000 sound recordings, 510,000 music scores, more than 500,000 microforms, 500,000 maps, 143,000 newspapers and serials, 90,000 audiovisuals, 90,000 electronic documents, 30,000 manuscripts. The current director of the Biblioteca Nacional is Ana Santos Aramburo, appointed in 2013. Former directors include her predecessors Glòria Pérez-Salmerón and Milagros del Corral as well as historian Juan Pablo Fusi and author Rosa Regàs. Given its role as the legal deposit for the whole of Spain, since 1991 it has kept most of the overflowing collection at a secondary site in Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid; the Biblioteca Nacional provides access to its collections through the following library services: Guidance and general information on the institution and other libraries.
Bibliographic information about its collection and those held by other libraries or library systems. Access to its automated catalogue, which contains close to 3,000,000 bibliographic records encompassing all of its collections. Archive consultation in the library's reading rooms. Interlibrary loans. Archive reproduction. Biblioteca Digital Hispánica, digital library launched in 2008 by the Biblioteca Nacional de España List of libraries in Spain Media related to Biblioteca Nacional de España at Wikimedia Commons Official site Official web catalog
