Biblioteca Nacional de España, National library in Madrid, Spain
The Biblioteca Nacional de España stands in a neoclassical building with a rectangular floor plan between Recoletos Avenue and Serrano Street in Madrid. The structure rises over several floors and includes reading rooms, storage areas for millions of volumes, archive spaces, and a public exhibition area on the ground level.
Philip V approved the plan for a Royal Library on 29 December 1711, and it opened to the public on 1 March 1712 in a passageway linking the Royal Alcázar with the Encarnación convent. The founding decree of 2 January 1716 confirmed its public character and set the rules that made it a model for legal deposit.
The institution bears the formal name Biblioteca Nacional de España and manages the complete bibliographic heritage of Spanish language on the Iberian peninsula. Its legal mandate requires all Spanish publishers to submit one copy of every printed work into this collection.
Visitors need a reader or researcher card to access the collections, issued through a registration process at the front desk. Opening hours run from Tuesday to Saturday 10:00 to 21:00 and Sunday 10:00 to 14:00, with Monday as the weekly closing day.
The ground floor hosts an exhibition space called El Infierno y las Maravillas, which presents the evolution from ancient alphabets to future writing technologies. This room links handwritten codices with digital media and allows visitors to trace the transformation of written communication across millennia.
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