ISSN Spain
Member since 1978
The Spanish ISSN National Center was established in 1978 by an agreement signed on 15th November between the International Center and Instituto Bibliográfico Hispánico (later embedded in the National Library of Spain). Currently our host institution is the National Library of Spain located in Madrid and it is a unit within the Serials Bibliographic Department.
We began to assign the first range of ISSN numbers in March 1979 to the serials publications edited in Spain. At the end of 2024 in ISSN Portal, nearly 83.000 records belongs to Spanish ISSN National Centre with 15.000 for online resources.
In 2003, the National Library of Spain held the 28th Annual Meeting of Directors of ISSN in Madrid with nearly 50 participants.
Spain's Biblioteca Nacional receives and stores copies of all the books published in Spain. It also holds an extremely valuable collection of incunabula, manuscripts, illustrations, drawings, photographs, audio recordings, musical scores, etc.
The library was founded by King Philip V of Spain in 1712 as the Palace Public Library (Biblioteca Pública de Palacio). The Royal Letters Patent that he granted, the predecessor of the current legal deposit requirement, made it mandatory for printers to submit a copy of every book printed in Spain to the library. In 1836, the library's status as Crown property was revoked and ownership was transferred to the Ministry of Governance (Ministerio de la Gobernación). At the same time, it was renamed the Biblioteca Nacional. In 1866 on 21 April, the Queen Elisabeth II placed the first stone in the Palace of Museums, Archives and National Libraries on Paseo de Recoletos, the future seat of the Biblioteca Nacional. Work ends on the Recoletos building, which would host the Latin American Exhibition commemorating the Fourth Centenary of the Discovery of America that year. The new building is organised internally to house the archive, library and museum. The Biblioteca Nacional's holdings begin to be moved to the seven-storey iron depository in the new building. In 1896 on 16 March, the Biblioteca Nacional opens to the public in its new home.
