Spain Genealogy

Guide to Spain genealogy. Birth records, marriage records, death records, census records, family history, and military records.

Country Information
Spain is a country in Southwest Europe bordered by Gibraltar, France, Andorra, and Portugal. Spanish is the official language.

Getting Started


Finding Your Ancestors' Town in Spain

 * Genealogical records are organized by geographical locality. Civil registration (government birth, marriage, and death records) and church records (christenings/baptisms, marriages, and burials) were kept at the local level.
 * If you do not know your ancestors' town, follow the advice in the Wiki article Spain Locating Place of Origin to search a variety of records that might provide that information.

Provinces
Spain is divided into 50 provinces. Each province belongs to one of 17 autonomous communities. A list of the provinces of Spain and access to their individual pages are listed below along with a clickable map. '''Each link will take you to a step-by-step process for research in that province. '''

Autonomous Communities
Spain is divided into 17 autonomous communities (comunidades autonomas, singular - comunidad autonoma) and 2 autonomous cities* (ciudades autonomas, singular - ciudad autonoma).

Places of Sovereignty (Plazas de Soberania)
The autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla plus three small islands of Islas Chafarinas, Penon de Alhucemas, and Penon de Velez de la Gomera, administered directly by the Spanish central government, are all along the coast of Morocco and are collectively referred to as Places of Sovereignty (Plazas de Soberania).''
 * Ceuta
 * Melilla
 * Islas Chafarinas
 * Penon de Alhucemas
 * Penon de Velez de la Gomera,

More Spain Research Strategies
Research strategies give guidance on how to research or what records to search for first. Below are additional research strategy Wiki articles for Spain.
 * Spain Finding Records
 * Spanish Script Tutorial
 * Understanding "Spanish Script"
 * BYU Research Outline for Spain
 * Spanish naming customs
 * Spanish naming customs

FamilySearch Resources
Below are FamilySearch resources that can assist you in researching your family.
 * Southern Europe Facebook Community - Facebook group discussing genealogy research
 * Historical Records, Spain - databases and record images on FamilySearch
 * Family History Center locator map

Research Tutorials

 * Search page
 * Dokuklik: Online Parish Record Indexes for the Basque Country in Spain
 * Introduction to Hispanic Research
 * Reading Spanish Handwritten Records:
 * Lesson 1: The Spanish Alphabet
 * Lesson 2: Words and Dates
 * Lesson 3: Reading Spanish Records
 * Hispanic Online Resources
 * U.S. Hispanic Immigration
 * U.S. Hispanic Immigrants: Finding their Place of Origin
 * Improve your Search Results in FamilySearch Hispanic Records

Websites

 * Hispanic Genealogy Blog
 * Spain Genealogy Links
 * Spanish Genealogy &amp; Family History
 * GenealogySpot: Spain
 * Spanish Genealogy Forum
 * Directory of Royal Genealogical Data
 * Biblioteca Nacional de España Collections - in English
 * Spain
 * Spain GenWeb