The beginning and the end of civil war in Catalonia: the testimony of the librarians of the public libraries through their diaries

Abstract

The public libraries in Catalonia were created in 1915 with Mancomunidad and the project of Eugeni d’Ors. Starting from 1920 they were directed by Jordi Rubió who arranged that the librarians wrote a diary where they could annotate questions relating to how the libraries work, but also the events and experiences that happened around them. This way the librarians became anonymous witnesses of what was historically happening in Spain and Catalonia for almost the whole 20th century because writing the diaries lasted until the 80’s. Until the year 1939 22 public libraries were opened, of which 19 have kept the diaries. For this article it has been exhaustively studied these documents between 1936-1939. More in detail, the entries written before and after of 19th of July in 1936 and those written in 1939 and also after the end of civil war have been given special attention. The aim of this investigation is to contribute for the acknowledgement of the library diaries as historical documents to study not only for the history of the libraries, but also for the history of our country and to acknowledge the value of the diaries as a testimony in our historical memory.