Archivo de Indias — Attraction in Seville

El Archivo General de Indias (AGI, or The General Archive of the Indies) was created by the Spanish King Carlos III in 1785. His aim was to collect all the documents related to the Spanish colonies in America (West Indies) and Asia in a single location. Before the creation of this archive, the documents were dispersed between several Court Archives, including those in Simancas, Cádiz and Seville. The splendid building of “La Casa Lonja de Sevilla” (the House Market of Seville), which was constructed during the times of Felipe II from the plans of Juan de Herrera, today serves as the main seat of the Archive.

The first documents were transferred from Simancas to the Casa Lonja de Sevilla in October of 1785. The year 1760 was set as the date which divided administrative and the historical records. Accordingly, all earlier papers had to be sent to the new Archivo de Indias. Since then, the Archive has incorporated the new records of the main colonial institutions: ”el Consejo de Indias” (the Council of Indies), “la Casa de la Contratación” (the House of Trade), “los Consulados” (the Consulates), “las Secretarías del Estado” (the Secretaries of State) and “el Despacho” (the Office). All these new acquisitions made the Archive one of the main documentary repositories for the study of the Spanish Administration in the New World.

Today the Archivo General de Indias holds more than 43,000 files, installed in eight linear kilometers of bookcases with about 80 million pages of original documents that allow researchers to investigate more than three centuries of history of the Spanish colonies in the Americas and East Asia.

The Archivo General de Indias holds a large number of documents on leprosy, the majority dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, there are also some records held from 1768 to 1831, regarding leprosy hospitals (called Hospitales de San Lázaro) in Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela and other Latin...

Hard to describe the disappointment I experienced having visited this archive today.

To be fair, my expectations were quite high as I just came back from a 6 months trip throughout South America where I learned a lot about Spanish colonialism. However, in this archive not a single word is uttered about the cruelty of the Spanish conquest of the Latin American countries, the mistreatment and injustice towards native inhabitants of the continent, their traditions and livelihood.

All you will find in this archive is praise for the humanitarian and educational mission of the conquistadores, the great achievements of having founded universities abroad and the alleged wisdom the Spanish empire brought to the peoples that became slaves to a culture and religion they were never asked to be part of.

As the archive's website claims there are supposed to be '[..] about eighty million pages of original documents that allow us to delve deeper into more than three centuries of history of an entire continent every day, from Tierra del Fuego to the southern United States, in addition to the Spanish Far East and the Philippines: political and social history, economic history and mentalities, ecclesiastical history and art history [..]'

As a visitor you will not get to see a single one of these actually important documents, neither will you be enabled a 'deep delve' into the history of the colonies. Very narrow and misleading framing of a significant source of history for about 440m people that to date feel the inequality the colonisation brought to their lives, let alone the millions that died from diseases and enslavement the Europeans brought to their continent. A nation as educated and conscious about their 'humanitarian mission' as Spain should know and do...

Visiting the Archivo General de Indias was, unfortunately, a disappointment. The documents on display are not originals but reproductions, which already diminishes the sense of historical authenticity one might expect from such an archive of global significance. More troubling, however, is what is entirely absent: any acknowledgement of the darker legacies tied to the very history this institution represents.

The archive is dedicated to the administrative machinery of the Spanish and Portuguese empires, yet there is no mention—anywhere—of the violence, exploitation, and devastation that accompanied their colonial expansion. The genocide, enslavement, systemic dispossession, and cultural destruction inflicted upon the Indigenous peoples of the Americas are completely erased from the narrative.

Of course, no one would expect every exhibit to be exclusively about atrocities. But the fact that there is no reference at all to these realities results in a one-sided portrayal that effectively glorifies empire and honors the bureaucrats who enabled it—without even the slightest recognition of the immense suffering and injustice their actions caused.

This silence is not just an omission; it is a distortion. The Archivo could have been an opportunity to confront history honestly, to balance administrative pride with human truth. Instead, it offers a sterile celebration of imperial order, stripped of context, reflection, or moral depth. That is not only a missed opportunity—it is profoundly...