The Diplomat
The Spanish Ambassador to Washington, Santiago Cabanas, and the President of the Spain-US Council Foundation, Juan Lladó, have presented the Library of Congress with the 9th ‘Bernardo de Galvez’ Award.
The prize, which was presented last Tuesday at the ambassador’s residence, is awarded annually by the Spain-U.S. Council Foundation and on this occasion recognises the contribution of the U.S. Congress to the safeguarding of the world’s bibliographic and documentary heritage.
The Award was collected by the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, the first woman and the first African-American to hold this position, which she has held since September 2016, who was accompanied by Suzanne Schadl, Director of the Library’s Hispanic Division.
In particular, the Foundation’s Board of Trustees took into account the “immense work” carried out by the Library’s Hispanic Division, created in 1939 at the behest of the founder of the Hispanic Society of America, the New York philanthropist and Hispanist Archer M. Huntington, and dedicated to the conservation, research, expansion and dissemination in the United States of the Hispanic-Lusitanian collections.
Established in 1800, the Library of Congress is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States and the largest library in the world, with more than 170 million bibliographic records. Its catalogue includes more than 39 million books and other printed materials in 470 languages, more than 72 million manuscripts, and the largest collection of rare and valuable books in all of North America, with more than 700,000 volumes, including one of the three best preserved complete copies of the Gutenberg Bible printed on parchment and the draft of the Declaration of Independence.
