PARES | Spanish Archives

Identification

Type:

Person

Preferred form:

García Soriano, Justo (1884-1949)

Fechas de existencia:

Orihuela (Alicante, España) 1884-04-14 - Madrid (España) 1949-05-04

History:

Spanish writer, archivist and librarian.

Son of Justo García Sánchez, expert and civil servant of the Ayuntamiento de Orihuela, and of Ramona Soriano Moreno. He studied in the Philosophy and Letters Faculty of Madrid's Central University, licensing in 1905 with extraordinary prize. In 1921, he read in Madrid's Central University his doctoral thesis about "El dialecto murciano". In 1915, he entered the Cuerpo Facultativo de Archiveros, Bibliotecarios y Arqueólogos, being destined, successively, to the Archivos de las Delegaciones de Hacienda of Albacete (1915-1916), Murcia (1916-1929) and Toledo (1920), from which he moved to the Biblioteca Nacional. In 1924, he entered the Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Historia, where he remained until 1936. Started the Civil War, he moved to Orihuela, where he organised a museum. In it, artistic works that were in danger of being destroyed were collected, contributing to the conservation of the historic heritage of his hometown. Years later, the Museo Diocesano de Orihuela was constituted, with big part of the works collected by him. He reflected his labour in his book El Museo de Orihuela (1937).

Finished the war, at the age of 55 and ten children, he is condemned as a freemason to 12 years of reclusion, and was removed from his status as an official. He was processed and imprisoned in Madrid's and Burgos' prisons, being banished from the city of Toledo. Subsequently, his sentence was commuted, and in 1946, he was readmitted in the Cuerpo Facultativo de Archiveros y Bibliotecarios, being librarian in the Medicine Faculty of Madrid's Universidad Complutense. He was patriarch of a whole generation of librarians.