Santander – Few people know that in addition to the cave paintings of Cantabria, the Menendez Pelayo Library is perhaps one of the region’s most important heritage gems. The collection comes from a writer of the same name and contains handwritten books, each worth a small fortune.
The Marcelino Menendez Pelayo Library It is a library in Santander that houses the collection of the author of the same name. Mendes Pelayo was a famous 19th-century writer and thinker who left his collection of 42,000 books and complete manuscripts for Santander City Council.
The Spanish government is currently working on a file renewal From the Menendez Pelayo library, to which one million euros has been allocated. After the start of the project, it was decided that the conditions of the building were not enough to effectively preserve the documentation. A lot of insects are found among the books that attack paper. A fire in an adjacent building and especially the firefighting work caused a lot of water damage in the library. However, it soon became clear that creating a completely secure environment would cost more than one million euros. One will have to build a hatch, air the room, remove all moisture from the ground and replace the lighting.
In previous works in the library, all books were transferred to the county historical archive. Meanwhile, the books had suffered so much damage that they had to be treated through the process of hypoxia. A process in which all the oxygen is pulled from space so that insects and parasites die. It turns out that a significant part of the books was eaten by woodworms and other xylophages (wood-eating insects). Experts warn that it is time to take protection seriously before the entire collection is lost.
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