A very special type of primary record in Spain and more specifically, in the Basque Country would be represented by the extensive amount of documentation that exists in the Spanish Basque Country since at least the 15th century, and which was written by the Escribanos (i.e. Spanish civil-law notaries, see here).
The Escribanos (who would change their name to Notarios in 1862, Notarioak being their name in Euskera) would take part both in legal businesses of any type and in judicial matters too. Basque ancestors have been traditionally very litigious people, and this is quite convenient for historical and genealogical research. Following the excellent 80-page manual (in Spanish) written by Aguinagalde[1]
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Types of notarial records in the Spanish Basque Country
All notarial records in the Spanish Basque Country were carefully gathered in voluminous books by the Escribanos through the centuries. Every town or city had several of them (e.g, we know in 1530 just in the town of Azpeitia in Gipuzkoa there were 8 active Escribanos) and records were kept with care at Notarial archives. All types of documents above can be useful for Basque ancestors. These will provide detail about their lives, further than main vital dates (birth, marriage, death) already known through Church Records. For the specific case of Gipuzkoa, we can generalize and classify the most relevant types of Notarial Records for Basque genealogy as follows:
- Legal businesses or proceedings of 6 different generic types:
- People-related: on personal status (e.g. guardianship and curatorship of minors), legal representation (e.g. power of attorney) or review of legal responsibilities (e.g. pardon, future claim settlement).
- Marriage-related: on marriage itself (e.g. consent to marriage) or dowry (e.g. groom to bride or bride to groom, and the very important Capitulaciones Matrimoniales or Prenuptial agreement).
- On goods, property, and real rights: different ancient forms of property and associated rights existed in the Spanish Basque Country since the Middle Ages, which originated many transactions that the Escribanos would record (e.g. sharecropping, leasing, renting, assignments or cessions of good or rights, agreements and transactions, sureties, payment letters, bartering, trading… and importantly the contratos de censo, similar to the French cens and Scottish feu-duties, for which thousands of records exist).
- On obligations and loans.
- Succession-related: a fundamental part of Notarial Records for centuries between the 15th and the 19th centuries, including wills which could be amended through codicils, documents for donatio mortis causa, or the very interesting (for genealogists) vínculos and mayorazgos which were explained before.
- Other types of legal arrangements which nowadays would pertain to labour, fiscal and trade law (e.g. Contracts of Affreightment in coastal towns, appointments, apprenticeship contracts, civil construction contracts…).
- Judicial process records (i.e. procedural records) which could be civil disputes, criminal cases etc. or the already mentioned expedientes de hidalguía.
With time, these archives have been centralized in a central place for each province, and there is a single resource in each to query for indexed and digitized information:
Additionally, there is a resource that includes documents from all of the Basque Autonomous Region in the Archive of Euskadi. Finally, the Spanish Archive Portal PARES also contains many documents from the Basque Country.
It is advisable to query in the five archives above separately, since some documents are only available in one of the search engines. The way to query is very simple: just introduce a surname, location or a keyword (e.g. hidalguia, capitulacion matrimonial, testamento…) and a number of documents will be shown, each with a date and description. In many cases the actual digitized images are available; otherwise, the archives may be contacted directly.
Explore more about notarial records in the Spanish Basque Country
- Registros eclesiásticos y apellidos de la región Vasca, España on the MyHeritage blog (in Spanish)
- Euskadiko Artxibo Historioa (in English)
- Archive of Álava
- Archive of Biscay
- Archive of Gipuzkoa
References
- ↑ F. Borja de Aguinagalde. Guía para la reconstrucción de familias en Gipuzkoa (s. XV-XIX). Diputación Foral de Gipuzkoa, ISBN 9788479071271, 1994.