Municipal fonds

This consists of the records of the various past and present local government bodies and municipal authority offices in their geographic area.

We manage and conserve municipal records from various historical periods:

• The old Gràcia Council fonds (1870-1897), as the documents from 1850 to 1870 were destroyed in the Reservists’ revolt of April 1870.
• Barcelona City Council fonds (1900 to the present), although most of the records date from 1984 and are based on the powers awarded to the district municipal councils that year.

The old Gràcia Council fonds is very useful for studying the town of Gràcia and local administration in the second half of the 19th century, as Gràcia was constituted as an independent municipality in 1850, with different boundaries to the current district. One of the most interesting sections is Urban Planning and Works which, for example, includes work on extending the Eixample, the García Faria sewerage system project and the files on private building work which clearly reveal the construction boom at the end of the 19th century. The Education, Charity and Supplies sections also contains significant records.

As regards the Barcelona City Council fonds, the oldest records come from the Deputy Mayor’s Office and the Municipal Council of District VIII, which functioned from 1900 to 1979. Notable among them are the municipal residents’ registers (padrons) up to 1920, although the number of records is small because neither the Deputy Mayor nor the Council had many functions.

Finally, it is worth mentioning the records from the current period, dating from 1984 with the creation of the District Municipal Council. This made it possible to study the administrative life of the district from then on up to the present day. The most consulted series are licences for business activities, major works and urban projects. We should also mention the 994 photo reportages and 1,352 photographs, in all 7,154 positives, 5,304 negatives and 546 slides, which show us the events and festivals held in the district from 1977 to 2006.

Private fonds

We have various fonds from private sources, most of them donated. Documentation generated by the associations themselves, notably the fonds of the Associació de Veïns del Camp d’en Grassot, the Cercle Filatèlic i Numismàtic de Gràcia, the Societat Obrera l’Artesa, the Espeleo Club de Gràcia, the Associació Esportiva i Cultural CADECA, the Associació de Veïns de la plaça del Sol and the Federació Catalana de Lluita.

Collections

Out of all of these, we can highlight the Club Excursionista de Gràcia Collection, which combines numerous graphic and photographic documents, specialist and newspaper libraries, and a range of heritage and personal fonds, all linked to the Vila de Gràcia from the 17th to the 20th centuries. This collection is indispensible for studying Gràcia’s associations and its leading figures.

It includes over 4,000 photographs that take you on a journey through the graphic and photographic image of the town, with an extensive photographic collection of widely varying images, such as the tram stop, already electrified, at the Josepets church in 1912, or the Abaceria market in the 1930s, as well as a collection of posters, notably the one announcing a “Grand Ball at the Teatre Bosc” from 1910, or the one advertising “Esperanto Lessons” from 1933.

We should also mention the “Ramírez Fonds" collection. Albums of the Festa Major de Gràcia”, a collection of great interest that chronicles the big annual local festival from the 1950s and 1960s. The photo collection of Armand Guart (1943-1947). The collections of programmes for the festa major from 1898 to 2007 and for the St Medir festival from 1908 to 2008.

We also have an auxiliary library, as well as magazines and periodicals produced in Gràcia which, in many cases, have come from residents’ associations and other entities.

If you want to find out all the information we have at the Gràcia Archives, consult the fonds table.