I will be visiting Spain this summer, Granada and Madrid. I know that my great grandparents were from Spain, however I'm not sure from what part. In my visit to the country I thought it might be interesting to do a little research. Does anyone know where I might be able to get some help in this endeavor? Thank you!
Posted by
Columbus, USA
332 posts
Family Search is a free genealogical website that may help you. Also a lot of libraries have free access to ancestry.com records. Sometimes ancestry has a sale to sign up.
Posted by
OP
6 posts
Thank you Susan! I am signed up with ancestry. But I didn't know the libraries have access to their records. So then I shall visit my local library!
Posted by
Upstate NY, USA
818 posts
As an FYI, Family Search and Ancestry may have the same records, but they digitize them with different folks - so you may find transcription errors with one service and not the other, or better search functions with one v the other (I found my husband's family's name change w FS but not with Ancestry). Good luck!
Posted by
Paris
6888 posts
Great project! Since I don't know how old you are, were your great grandparents involved in the Spanish Civil War? If so, the military archives have been digitized (and I'll give you more detail). If not...said war can make your research harder, as many records from the 20s and 30s were "lost", or so I was told when attempting similar research ten years ago.
Posted by
Barcelona (Catalonia)
2941 posts
"lost"
Many records have been either destroyed and/or buried in sealed archives not open to historians or anyone else even today.
Some related information... https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/books/review/the-spanish-holocaust-by-paul-preston.html ... and this: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/spain-seeks-justice-for-final-victim-of-ailing-francos-garrotte-415202.html
Posted by
Barcelona ☀️ Sweden ❄️
3901 posts
From their last names (we have multiple last names in Spain), one may be able to deduce from what region they came from, that would definitely be the first step, as Spain is a big country. From there you can look at the local civil registrations (now digitised online) for that specific region, dating back to the 19th century.
Posted by
Tresana, Highlands Ranch, CO, USA
23267 posts
Where are you living now? If there is a LDS family history center near by, that is where I would start. See ---https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Introduction_to_Family_History_Centers