Spain, Consular Records of Emigrants, 1808-1960

What is in This Collection?

Spain has an extensive network of Consulates and Embassies abroad that provide a series of services for Spaniard citizens and for foreigners that want to travel to Spain. Some of these services include the registration of births, marriages, and deaths of Spaniards living abroad, residence certificates, citizenship, passports, notary public documents, visas for foreigners, and others. The civil registration created at a consular office has the same validity and follows the same legal codes as the one in the mother country. One month after the civil event has been registered in a consulate abroad, a duplicate record is sent to the Central Civil Registry in Madrid, from where copies can be requested.

Travelers sometimes had to present proofs of birth and marriage when traveling abroad. Proofs of death were needed to transport the bodies of deceased travelers and/or family members of the traveler. For more information about Spain civil registrations, see the article Spain Civil Registration - Vital Records. The information in vital records presented at consulates were used to create the records you see here, wherein the information was extracted and officials signed their approval. Moreover, some of the documents you will find in this collection will be those pertaining to official consulate actions.

Consular services are necessary for Spaniards living or traveling abroad for legal documentation, protection, and other related needs while abroad. All records created in a consular office are as valid and legal as if created in Spain

These record types vary depending the business of the traveler it is documenting. Not all of the record types listed below will be available from each consulate solely because they were never recorded; they were never recorded because they weren't required. The information in each record varies by year.

The records are currently housed at the Archivo General de la Administración in Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain.

As of May 2018, this collection covers the 1808 to 1960. More images will be published as they become available and comply with the 50 year cut off restrictions.

Additional records and/or images may be added to this collection in the future.

Reading These Records

These records are written in Spanish. For help reading them see:

• Spanish Genealogical Word List
• Brigham Young University: Spanish Script Tutorial

FamilySearch Learning Center:

• Reading Spanish Handwriting
• Paleogra-what?! Deciphering Spanish Handwriting - Introduction
• Registros Civiles y Parroquiales (In Spanish)

To Browse This Collection

You can browse through images in this collection using the waypoints on the Collection Browse Page for Spain, Consular Records of Emigrants, 1808-1960.

What Can These Records Tell Me?

The following information may be found in these records:
Vitals

Passport records

Passport, arrival, immigration, and ship passenger registers

Citizen schedules

Enlistment records

Collection Content

Sample Images

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  1931 Birth Record Page 1.

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  1931 Birth Record Page 2

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  1931 Marriage Record

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  1896 Arrival Manifest

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  1896 Citizenship Schedule

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  1932 Citizenship Record

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  1929 Military Draft Card

Coverage Table

Record Types	Earliest Year	Latest Year
Civil Registration - Births	1875	1910
Civil Registration - Marriages	1875	1935
Civil Registration - Deaths	1875	1960
Migration/Passport	1815	1920
Military Records - Draft	1836	1920
Naturalization/Citizenship	1808	1920