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7 January 2024 2.00 h

BARCELONA BAR ASSOCIATION

Leader in legal tomes

The Barcelona Bar As­so­ci­a­tion Li­brary was cre­ated in 1833, co­in­cid­ing with the foun­da­tion of the legal in­sti­tu­tion. At first it did not have a fixed home and moved from house to house de­pend­ing on who was the dean. It was not until the mid­dle of the 20th cen­tury when the as­so­ci­a­tion com­mis­sioned ar­chi­tect Agustí Bor­rell to build its cur­rent head­quar­ters, Palauet Casades. In the case of the li­brary, it was de­signed fol­low­ing the Eng­lish style, ma­jes­tic and with a re­cur­rent use of wood. In­side we can also find ex­am­ples of mod­ernist fur­ni­ture, such as a desk de­signed by the fa­mous Barcelona ar­chi­tect, Lluís Domènech i Mon­taner.

The li­brary’s col­lec­tion in­cludes scrolls, legal pleas, man­u­scripts and printed books from the 11th cen­tury to 1900. There are 228 man­u­scripts, 2,111 scrolls, 10,000 pleas and 2,350 books from the 16th cen­tury alone. In ad­di­tion to the book se­lected for us by di­rec­tor, Patrícia San­pera, other re­mark­able works in the li­brary in­clude the Books of the Con­sulate of the Sea, which con­tained all the reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing mar­itime trans­port.

In all, the li­brary boasts over 350,000 vol­umes, some 1,600 dif­fer­ent pe­ri­od­i­cals and 50 data­bases with leg­isla­tive, ju­rispru­dence and doc­tri­nal con­tent. The li­brary is con­sid­ered the third best spe­cialised law li­brary in Eu­rope, after the ones in Freiburg (Ger­many) and Bologna (Italy), which are also pub­licly funded. The as­so­ci­a­tion’s li­brary is open to mem­bers, al­though stu­dents and teach­ers of law can also apply for ac­cess.

Com­pi­la­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tions and other rights of Cat­alo­nia

Year: 1495

Printer: Un­known

Constitutions and rights

The Compilation of the Constitutions and other rights of Catalonia is the first edition of the compilation of Catalan laws. It mainly includes such documents as constitutions, chapters and acts of court, statutes of peace and truce and other legislative material. Stored and maintained in the library, this 1495 first edition is typical of books printed before 1500, which were made without a cover.

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