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ENGLISH by Oona Thommes Paredes Oona Paredes is completing her Ph.D. in Anthropology at Arizona State University page
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for scholars coming from out-of-town. They also hold weekly lectures called mesas redondas on a wide range of research topics, and it is worth attending at least a few. They are often quite interesting, and you are also likely to see other AGI researchers there. Take advantage of these lectures to hone your listening and comprehension – proper academic Spanish is much easier to understand than everyday vernacular, especially in Sevilla. If you cannot find the schedule of lectures, you might just try showing up at the Escuela at a little before 7 pm on any given Tuesday and inquire at the reception. The EEHA Residencia is a good place for a brief stay, and there’s no denying that it helps your bona fides somewhat when colleagues find out you are staying at “La Escuela.” But as guests have no access to kitchen or laundry facilities, and the cost of outside laundry service is ridiculous (at least 7 euros for a single load of wash), unless you have a substantial grant you may wish to weigh other options. Some might also find the general ambience of the Escuela a bit off-putting. I heard more than one person joke that the place was so austere, it must have been designed by the Opus Dei. Finally, there is the 24-hour live and video security throughout the building and the grounds, which makes you feel safe until you realize that you are also under constant surveillance, except inside your room. Even if you have nothing to hide, it may eventually start to bother you.
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That said, the Escuela’s rooms are not only very secure, they are quite nice, each with a private bath, and ideally located at the Plaza del Duque (around the corner from El Corte Inglés, the largest supermarket and department store in town). At 40 euros a day, they are not cheap, but the EEHA offers residential scholarships (becas) for non-Spanish citizens. These amount to free lodging for a month or so, a value of about 1200 euros. More information is available at http://www.eeha.csic.es. Be prepared to use only Spanish in applying for this beca, and to demonstrate your competence in Spanish through the quality of your proposal and your correspondence with them. Philippinists should be aware that rarely do our kind make an appearance vis-à-vis the local academic establishment, and this rarity may cause them to take full advantage of your presence there. You might be asked (as I was) to give one of those mesa redonda lectures that are normally reserved for more established scholars. In fact, only becarios with a Ph.D. normally present their work, so I did not come prepared. Don’t let this happen to you. Knowing my own linguistic limitations, I was absolutely horrified by the prospect of speaking extemporaneously in Spanish and tried to explain to the Director that, despite my reading abilities, I was in fact not ready to give a presentation in his language, |
and it would only embarrass them in the end. It would have been convincing except that I explained it just a little too well, so the Director chided me for joking around as he wrote down the date of my lecture. Most people will confuse good pronunciation with fluency, so let that be a lesson. As such, I had no choice but to spend all my free time for the next two weeks neglecting my other work in order to write a lecture in tortured Academy Spanish and pestering other, busier researchers to check my grammar. In English, I normally would not need more than an outline for such a presentation, but in Spanish I had to read it out word for word to avoid embarrassing myself (and by extension all Filipinos). So, if you can, do prepare something in advance, even if it is only a basic Spanish translation of one of your old papers. Even if you never present it as a lecture, you can print a copy for anyone interested in your research.
The AGI is no doubt the archival headquarters for the Spanish colonial period, with almost 50,000 legajos or bundles of documents, each of which might contain a stack of papers more than a foot high. While “Filipinas” comprises only a small part of this grand collection, it is the motherlode for this period. Yet the AGI’s collection of Philippine materials is sadly underutilized, and many of its documents might not have been viewed in the past century. They are just there, waiting to be explored. This is no doubt why the staff notices when someone is researching Filipinas.
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A good, basic orientation to the kinds of Philippine materials that can be found at the AGI is already available in pages 58-77 of Patricio Hidalgo’s Guía de Fuentes Manuscritas para la Historia de Filipinas Conservadas en España, mentioned in the previous section. There is no need to repeat it here. But I want to dispel the rumour I heard (which may still be circulating) that there is a room of Philippine materials at the AGI in which one can browse through random stacks of uncatalogued Philippine materials. I asked the archivist I became friends with: there is no such room. Believe in conspiracy theories if you must, but the bottom line is that if it does not have a reference number in the computerized catalog, they cannot retrieve it for you. There are, however, many, many legajos that have only nondescript labels that say absolutely nothing about their contents. If you have the time to explore, it is worth the trouble to go through at least one or more of these, just to see what might be there. It might just be more workaday bureaucratic correspondence, filed in triplicate, informing the Governor General that his letter of a certain date had been received and that there would be a proper reply sent in due course, and in the meantime long live the King, may God keep Him for as many years he wishes as he defends our Most Holy Faith, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But even within that context there are many interesting possibilities, and you never know what you might find. |
While you are there, take the time to look through their library. Those bookshelves are lined not only with dictionaries but also with reference materials pertaining to Spain’s colonial history. Just browsing at random, I found a number of surprisingly useful books, including a comprehensive series that compiled the laws of the Indies, or rulings pertaining to the colonies, highlighting important legal distinctions between the colonization or pacification of the Philippines and the conquest of the Americas, especially with regard to the rights of indigenous leaders. There is a separate library from which books can be requested, reserved, and brought to your workstation. During renovations to the AGI, the card catalog and request forms are located right next to the entrance of the temporary quarters on Calle Sto. Tomas. This is something you can do should you find yourself on the waiting list or are having a particularly slow morning. The AGI has its own procedures for ordering legajos for viewing, and I will only include here things that might be useful to know before you walk into the sala for the first time. First and foremost is that the staff will retrieve orders only three times a day – if you place your order before 9 a.m. (this includes orders placed after 1 p.m. the day before), you will get your legajos by around 9:30 a.m. After that, you must wait until after 11 a.m. to get your legajos. The final round of orders is concluded around 1:00 p.m. If you place your order after that time, don’t count on seeing your order |
until the next day, because the AGI closes at 3 p.m. By the same token, if you plan to arrive at the AGI first thing in the morning and expect immediate access to your legajos, you should order them by 1 p.m. the day before and place them in reserve. You can keep materials on hold if you plan to use them again within a few days, but you can have only three existing orders at a time. At this time, there is also a need to conserve table space in the sala (see fn. 5), because the current workspaces are not big enough for more than one legajo. The request forms on the archivists’ desks are for microfilm and other special items. Most of your document requests will made online from your work station. If you order something online and there is a microfilm copy, you will be asked to choose the microfilm copy, which will require filling out a paper form. If you want printouts of your microfilm pages, you must do it yourself at the machine. The staff will load the roll and show you how to print; if you make only a handful of printouts, they will not bother with the charges. As for reproductions, photoduplication, and other services, you will need a master form (the largest form on the archivists’ desks) for each type of reproduction you are ordering. This means that you must list orders for printouts of digitized documents (imágenes impresas) and photocopies (fotocopias) on separate master forms. In each case, you can select one or more particular pages to be copied, or request a copy of the whole document – just make sure to indicate the page numbers clearly and that the information on the master form matches the individual orders.
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Each individual order for imágenes impresas is placed online from your work station. Each printout is relatively cheap and you will be tempted to order printouts of everything. The nice thing about imágenes impresas is that if you pay for your printouts by 11 a.m., you can generally pick them up after lunch on the same day. They say that, in theory, you can wait until you are “done” – be it a week or even a month – before you choose to pay. But please be aware that these orders are spooled on the AGI server and will remain there until you pay for your order. Too many spooled orders will shut down the system, and they don’t like it when that happens. Once your imágenes impresas order reaches a hundred pages or more, it’s time to pay up so that it can be cleared from the server’s memory. Payment is really the only bothersome part of the process because you must exit the archive and go to a bank around the corner, wait in line, wait for the teller to place the money in the AGI’s account, then take the receipt back to the AGI office to prove that you paid. At that point they will press the “print” button and tell you how long it should take to print everything out. Photocopies and other reproductions of non-digitized items take much longer and are ordered individually with a paper form that is inserted in the respective legajo. Make sure the information there matches what is on your master form. Photocopies at the AGI can take six weeks or more due to their backlog, but they deliver these orders by insured mail. If you order a lot of copies and printouts, you might find it useful to either retain a copy of your master form or write down the information in your notes for reference purposes. If your total order is massive (I have around 1500 pages |
of reproductions), doing this will allow you cross-reference the documents you have received and help you determine whether anything is missing. If, like me, you stay in Sevilla long enough and pick up some of your special orders in person, you might decide to mail them home in boxes rather than cart them around in your already heavy luggage to the next archive (remember, all those souvenirs will weigh a ton). The Sevilla post office has sturdy boxes for sale and insured mail is reliable and reasonably priced. According to my archivist friend at the AGI, if disaster strikes and the mailed reproductions are somehow lost, the AGI will try its best to help you out. If you retain a copy of your master forms, you will be able to re-order all the same documents by mail as a last resort. Of course you will have to pay for everything all over again, but you can do this by international wire transfer.
The AHN is distinct from the AGI in that you will encounter a much smaller percentage of digitized documents here. Despite the relative inconvenience of having to order photocopies instead of imágenes impresas, it can be a welcome change after staring at a computer screen all day. AHN coverage of the Philippines is not quite as monumental and nebulous as that of the AGI, and it is therefore more manageable. Most of the materials you will find here are from later in the Spanish colonial period, especially from the 19th century. Consequently, the correspondence and reports are somewhat more complete and easier to read. |
Working at the AHN is much less complicated than working at the AGI: it is a smaller archive, with fewer work stations in a very pleasant sala blessed with lots of natural light. Ironically, they appear to have the same number of staff working in the reading room. The AHN also has a treasurer only a few doors down from the sala, which means greater convenience in paying for copies. There is also a cafeteria only two buildings away in the same compound (ask the security guard). As for special procedures, they will not retrieve new legajos in the second half of the day, but their system allows for greater leeway with orders in the morning than the AGI system. You place legajo orders both online and on paper, but there are no set times during which such orders can be placed. Every legajo I ordered arrived less than 15 minutes after I placed the order. The AHN Photoduplication department also seems much more efficient. Here, photocopies normally take only one week instead of six. They are able to mail orders, as well as receive orders by mail. For a minor fee you can expedite your request for one-day pickup under special circumstances (e.g., your flight leaves the next day). What I liked best about the AHN was that sala was quiet, even though it is located in the heart of Madrid. This is because the archive is situated inside the larger campus of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), away from the main road (Calle Serrano, a busy four-lane street), surrounded by other buildings that dampen the sound of city traffic. In contrast, the AGI is located in the heart of Sevilla’s tourist attractions, right next door to both the |