The National Library (Biblioteca Nacional) was founded by King Philip V at the end of 1711 (known at this time as the Real Biblioteca or Royal Library), and opened its doors for the first time in March of 1712. It houses a copy of every single book published in Spain, as well as a valuable collection of incunables, manuscripts, prints, drawings, photographs, maps, sound recordings, scores, etc. It also has additional premises in Alcalá de Henares.
The Biblioteca Nacional raises awareness about the bibliographic heritage it houses through its catalogue and the compilation of the Spanish Bibliography. It also offers public services including consultation rooms and remote services through its webpage, as well as specialist bibliographic information services and inter-library loans. In order to consult these collections, you must have a reader's or researchers' card.
The National Library also includes the National Newspaper and Periodicals Library , which thanks to the digitalization process started in 2007, gives the public online access to historical and modern Spanish newspapers that are part of the National Library’s collection.
Through its Exhibition Rooms , which are open to the public, the collections, the functioning and the history of the National Library can be seen.
El Infierno y las Maravillas exhibition space.
Inaugurated on 27 February 2024 to replace the former National Library Museum, this new exhibition space, located on floor -1 of the building, is a unique, multidisciplinary place where past, present and future dialogue through the BNE's holdings and collections, an educational and entertaining space that highlights the importance of preserving our documentary and bibliographic heritage.
Under a name that alludes to the secret place where libraries used to hide their forbidden books and the most valuable ones, the treasures of the collection, the space houses a permanent exhibition in which the visitor takes a journey from the origins of alphabets and images to the machines that write the future through the BNE's holdings and collections.
The exhibition discourse of the new space is divided into four rooms, through which the history of knowledge and human creations is traced:
· - Creation, reading: knowledge.
· - The hells so human.
· - The Book of Wonders (with the sub-section Wonderful Cartographies and The Expanded Book).
· - Memory machines and the future.
Throughout the exhibition, the walls are dotted with quotations from authors such as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Marshall McLuhan, Carl Sagan, Emilia Pardo Bazán, Joan Brossa, María Zambrano and Italo Calvino, reminding us of the importance of the texts and content of books.
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