Expert’s choice
Genealogist Daniel SmithRamos of thegenealogycorner. wordpress.com has researched roots in England, Italy and Spain
“One of the many blessings of having mixed ancestry is being able to explore and compare genealogy resources in different countries. Almost all of my maternal ancestors came from the rural region of Galicia in north-west Spain. Over the years researching other people’s families I have come to rely heavily on Galiciana: Galicia’s Digital Library ( bit.ly/galiciana-digital-library), which holds a wide range of documents, from photographs of local festivities to official government gazettes. “My favourite collection, however, is the repository of Galician newspapers broadly covering 1850–1960. In a country like Spain, which does not have a centralised index for its civil registration system and where church records are rarely digitised or available online, finding references through newspapers (such as birth and marriage announcements, obituaries, migration movements, civic events and of course the occasional social scandal) is practically indispensable. For instance, thanks to this invaluable tool I have been able to study my great grandfather’s political discourses, see references to my grandparents’ honeymoon itinerary, and read about the violent death of a famous cousin in a car accident in 1933. Anyone with ancestry from this corner of the world, or with an interest in Spanish and/or Galician heritage, should add the website to their list of favourites.”