From El Siglo department store to Convent dels Àngels

The Ciutat Vella Archives grew out of an initiative put forward by the Raval Residents’ Association in 1980 at the presentation of a book on the neighbourhood’s history, El Raval. Història d’un barri servidor d’una ciutat.

They reached an agreement with Ciutat Vella District Municipal Council to allocate a small part of the District Council headquarters for the incipient Raval Historical Archive.

As a result, the Ciutat Vella Municipal Archives was officially created in 1989 and provisionally kept in the mezzanine at Plaça del Bonsuccés, 6, in a building put up by the constructor Núñez i Navarro that had previously housed the post office and the El Siglo department store.

In a little over three years, the lack of space meant this centre was no longer suitable and, in the middle of 1993, the Ciutat Vella Archives moved to their current centre in the old novitiate tower at the Convent dels Àngels, on the street with the same name. Given the huge number of documents the district generated, it was soon necessary to find a new space for repositories that could accommodate textual fonds growing in geometric progression. So, in 2005, they took advantage of the ground floor at Carrer del Carme, 84, a property owned by the developers Foment de Ciutat Vella, and fitted it out as a temporary archive repository.

Finally, between 2007 and 2008, part of the MACBA Documentation Centre basement (137m2) was fitted out and the records from Carrer del Carme were moved there, along with other documents generated by the various District Council departments.