Civil Records

[Sweeney]

I was wondering if somebody can please steer me in the right direction. My Grandmother once told me her father, Guillermo Verdin, once served as the Mayor of his town (I assume she meant Salinas). If this is true, how would I acquire more information about his political career? In addition, does anybody know if there are genealogical websites similar to Ancestry.com in Spain that I can access? Thank you in advance for your assistance!

[Suronda]

Hello Donna,

I was intrigued by your question, and although I haven't done any searching in Spainsh archives, I thought I'd start looking around. Here's what I came up with.

El Ministerio de Educaction, Cultura y Deporte of Spain has a great website that lists several important archives. Some of them are thematically related (Civil War, for example) while others are geographically organized.

There didn't appear to be anything specifically about Asturias on the opening page, but when searching around their site, I found the Bibliografia de Archivos which allows you to search by key word for the title. When searching "Asturias," I found:

Archivo Histórico de Asturias
c/ Águila, 10
33003 - Oviedo
Tlf. 985/22 57 69
Fax. 985/21 43 28

You can see their general holdings by searching them at the Ministry's website.

In addition, the Minister of Education has recently made a huge effort to have Spanish governmental sources available via the Internet. The result is AER, Archivos Espanoles en Red. I didn't surf the site, but you might find some useful information here as well. You could at least ask for direction from these folks.

Regarding your question about Spanish genealogical sites like Ancestry.com, I did find one La-Genealogia.Com Their forums don't seem very active, but you might get some information by posting here. The site is bilingual, but isn't so well established. There are no databases connected with it except for a database of sirnames. I’m thinking that as time passes and it becomes better known, it could be an important site.

There's also Anillo de Genealogía Hispana and Genealogía española that have several possibilities. I didn't have time to search through these thoroughly, but wanted to give you an idea of some of the sites that are available.

If you, or anyone else, would like to do a review of one of these, or other similar sites, I think it would be most useful to us all. Please feel free to post, share what you find, and give your thoughts about the resources available.

Hope this helps!

S.

[Art]

In the Tips and Suggestions section of
http://www.traceit.com/gazette/Dec14.html,
there are ideas on how to:

-- find out what archives exist in a certain town of Spain or HispanoAmerica using
http://www.mcu.es/cgi-bin/ALBALA/AlbalaCGI?CMD=INICIAL
(Maybe Suronda's URL above accesses the same information. I've tried this one, but it's too slow to use.) ,

-- find the phone numbers for a surname in a town in Spain, using Infospace: http://in-123.infospace.com/_1_14512955 ... tl-es.html, and

-- locate a Spanish town that may have disappeared, using the
- Alphabetic Listing of Spanish Municipalities:
http://www.ldelpino.com/listamun.html,

[Art: that site is now gone, but available in the www.WaybackMachine.org archive:
http://web.archive.org/web/200501210915 ... eneal.html
Try that instead.]

- the Global Gazetteer, which supposedly has situation map of the world's cities (I couldn't pull any maps up); it does have latitude, longitude, and altitude:
http://www.calle.com/world/spain/index.html, and

- the book "Diccionario Geográfico" written by Pascual Madoz in about 1850.

[Sweeney]

Hi, I was hoping somebody can help me with a translation. I recently visited the following website to order a Death Certificate from Spain:

http://www.mju.es/registro_civil/index.htm

At one point it asks me to provide the following information:

Datos del solicitante:
*nombre y apellidos:
*DNI:
*e-mail:
teléfono de contacto:


Does anybody know what DNI stands for? It is required information, but I am not sure what it means.

Thanks!

[Art]

Datos del solicitante: = data for the applicant or petitioner (I'm pretty sure that's you and not the person for whom you're asking for a death certificate, especially judging by the context of that site--see the next thread below)

*nombre y apellidos: first name, last names

*DNI = Documento Nacional de Identidad, so I assume that's a national (Spanish) id. You could offer your social security number or passport number, but I doubt they'll be impressed. They may not require this item for foreigners.

*e-mail = email (sorry, had to be complete, didn't I?!)

teléfono de contacto= phone number where they can get hold of you

[Art]

I'm following up on my last response and looking at the form at:
http://www.mju.es/registro_civil/index.htm.

My understanding is that the first part is asking for data about the person you want information about (Identificación de la persona de la que se solicita certificación).

The second part is asking for information about the person who is asking (Datos del solicitante).

But I have to really think about these things and look terms up, so someone else may have a different answer!

[Lourdes García Quirós]

I made several requests to the Registro Civil in Spain. The first section is information about the person I need to find out, followed by my information. When I reach the area where they asked me for my DNI I always explain that I'm not a citizen of Spain, and my country of residence is the USA. Never in a million years I will give my social security number through the Internet. If for any reason they will need any identification I rather send it through a letter. Up to now they always sent me my copies without a problem.

Datos del solicitante: = data for the applicant or petitioner (I'm pretty sure that's you and not the person for whom you're asking for a death certificate, especially judging by the context of that site--see the next thread below)

*nombre y apellidos: first name, last names

*DNI = Documento Nacional de Identidad, so I assume that's a national (Spanish) id. You could offer your social security number or passport number, but I doubt they'll be impressed. They may not require this item for foreigners.

*e-mail = email (sorry, had to be complete, didn't I?!)

teléfono de contacto= phone number where they can get hold of you

[Sweeney]

I sent in two requests for documents to the Castrillon Civil Register. The Castrillon Civil Register is not online yet, so I had to send out my requests by regular mail.

The first request I sent out in May and have yet to receive any information. The second request I sent out a few weeks ago and I received the documents (Death Certificates) today. I did things a little different for the second request, perhaps that is why I got a quick response.

In my request, I provided the names and dates, and place of death of my great grandparents, plus I included the names of their parents. I mentioned that I was not a Spanish Citizen and therefore I did not have a DNI number. In addition, I sent a self addressed envelope and a couple dollars for postage. I know I should have sent International Reply Coupons, but my post office does not carry them.

I wrote my request out in Spanish and English. I used a spanish translation program found free on the internet to translate my message into Spanish.

The documents were sent to me directly in the envelope I provided.

I just wanted to let everybody know!