Archivo de Indias, Tintin y la Luna, Azul

Weekend days are well-packed!! First stop of the day was the Archives of the Indies which houses the documents related to the Spanish empire, in particular, of the Americas and Philippines. The project to consolidate the archives, which were dispersed between several Spanish cities, was begun in 1785.

Pomegranates … wish they were ripe enough to eat!
Admission is free. We really like that 🙂
Safe boxes used to store money and valuables in the Middle Ages. Germany had a monopoly on producing them until the 18th century.
A look at the complex mechanism.
The building contains 80 million pages of documents and maps about the Spanish colonies.
There’s 9 km of shelving that covers more than 300 years of information!
Spain colonized all of Central and South America, and started into Asia: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Peru, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela, the Phillippines.
Letters from three kids to their dad.
For many years, Seville was the only port licensed to trade with the colonies, hence its importance as the trading centre.
Teaching moment. This was a bronze cannon that was made in Seville in 1616 and used on a galleon that sank near Cuba in 1622. Documents from the archives were used to locate the ship in 1975 and the cannon, along with crates of gold and silver coins were retrieved.

Our next stop was an exhibition called Tintin and the Moon, which uses science and comics to showcase man’s arrival on the moon. The Tintin portion focused on the process of drawing the comics.

Learning about space colonies and what is required to make them habitable.
Apollo 11 returned to earth by splashing into the North Pacific Ocean. The astronauts then spent 3 weeks in isolation in a quarantine trailer (ugh!)
Replica of the lunar module
A look inside.
Explorers on the moon: find the right balance of water and air to launch the bottle to hit the spring above. Felix: “This is really fun!!”
Another replica of the lunar module (actual size). It carries two astronauts – they have to stand to save space. It also gives them a better view of the terrain. Felix’s comment was “It’s so squished! How can they fit?”
The Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi produced the Adventures of Tintin under the pen name of Hergé.
The original – step 1. Doesn’t look like much.
Step 2.
Step 3 – much more recognizable!

Included in the exhibition was admission to Azul – exposure to blue, “the colour of Modernism” where we saw various pieces of art using the different types of blue. Here are our favourites.

Blue courtyard, painted in 1913 by Santiago Rusinñol
Memories, painted in the late 1800s by Dionís Verdaguer
Azul masterpiece!
Just kidding – this is hanging about the bed in the master bedroom of our apartment 😛
Check out the name of the bar!
16 km for the day

1 comments on “Archivo de Indias, Tintin y la Luna, Azul

  1. Looks very interesting. Started to collect records in 1785, so when will they be done?

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