ABSTRACT

Spain’s national historic archives are entrusted with the custody of documents that shed light on historic events and periods of worldwide interest. Further to the country’s Transparency Act (2013) and given such archives’ importance as national scale public cultural institutions, their economic and financial information is pertinent and should be accessible to citizens. This study reviewed the economic and financial data available on the websites of eight historic archives in Spain and those of their parent institutions. That their activity does not pursue economic objectives is no reason for not providing an account of what they do, how they do it and the resources they deploy. Searches for a series of active disclosure-related indicators required under Spain’s Transparency Act revealed that these archives fail to furnish any economic, budgetary or statistical information whatsoever on their websites. Those findings infer that the institutions at issue do not deem legal active disclosure obligations to be applicable to them as organizational units under the aegis of a higher-ranking body, in this case the Ministry of Culture. Archives are urged to adopt the good practices in place in other countries and make an effort to enhance their transparency, which would indisputably redound to their visibility, credibility and institutional image.

摘要

西班牙的国家历史档案馆负责保管能够揭示历史事件和具有全球意义的时期的文件。继国家的《透明度法案》（2013 年）之后，鉴于档案馆作为国家级公共文化机构的重要性，它们的经济和金融信息是相关的，公民应该可以访问。本研究回顾了西班牙八个历史档案馆及其上级机构网站上的经济和金融数据。他们的活动不追求经济目标，这并不是不提供他们做什么、他们如何做以及他们部署的资源的说明的理由。对西班牙《透明度法案》要求的一系列主动披露相关指标的搜索显示，这些档案未能提供任何经济、其网站上的任何预算或统计信息。这些调查结果推断，相关机构并不认为法律主动披露义务适用于作为更高级别机构（在本例中为文化部）支持下的组织单位。敦促档案馆采用其他国家的良好做法，并努力提高其透明度，这无疑将有助于提高其知名度、可信度和机构形象。