LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies

Scarfe-La Trobe Collection of Spanish Plays

The collection comprises nearly 2,000 items consisting of 1,068 plays (with 904 duplicates), ranging in date from the Seventeenth to the end of the Nineteenth Centuries. Representing a wide range of dramatic genres, a large proportion are comedias sueltas, that is, plays that were printed separately for sale in pamphlet form; a smaller number are desglosadas - plays printed to form part of (mainly) seventeenth century volumes; such volumes normally contained 12 plays, but they were also made available ‘disbound’ for sale as single items. In all, the work of more than 200 different dramatists is represented. Purchased from Bruno Scarfe, formerly of La Trobe University, in 2003 with help from the National Fund for Acquisitions, Glasgow University Chancellor’s Fund, the Friends of Glasgow University Library, the Faculty of Arts Library Discretionary Fund and the Principal’s Strategic Development Fund.

Gallacher Memorial Library

The Gallacher Memorial Library is based on the library of William Gallacher, it has grown by further donations since his death in 1965. It is a diverse collection of material on Spain donated from the collections of persons such as G. McCarty, past secretary of the IBA. It also includes material from the Gallacher Memorial Library's Guy Aldred collection.

Spanish Civil War Collection

Most of the material was donated by Janey Buchan and has been supplemented by further acquisitions and donations. The collection represents a continuing record of publication from 1936 to the present day. Most of the material is pro-Republicans but there are also significant items that reflect a Nationalist bias.

Ronald Fraser Oral History Collection

The Ronald Fraser Oral History Collection consists of research materials gathered by Ronald Fraser, the leading oral historian in the field of modern Spanish history, for his books In Hiding: the life of Manuel Cortes and The Pueblo: a mountain village on the Costa del Sol, which record first-hand accounts of the experience of living in post-War Spain. It includes tapes of interviews (in Spanish with English transcripts) with Manuel Cortes, the last republican Mayor of a small Spanish village, who lived in hiding from Franco's regime for 30 years.