Gabriel Álvarez de Toledo
Gabriel Alvarez de Toledo y Pellicer was the Royal Librarian of King Felipe V of Spain. the rules established that the Director should be the King Confessor, at the time Pedro Robinet who delegated the day-to-day running and administration into Gabriel.
Don Gabriel was born in Seville, and was a founder Member of the Royal Spanish Academy in 1713, Secretary of the King of Spain and a Knight of the Military Order of Alcantara.
To study the first Royal Librarians and the effective day-to-day Royal Library Directors it is worth mentioning them for researching the purchases and compulsory input of books arriving at the Library:
General Directors of the Royal Library:
1712-1715 : Pedro Robinet, French, Jesuit.
1715 : Esteban Lecompaseur, French, Jesuit.
1715-1723 : Guillermo Daubenton, French, Jesuit.
1723-1724 : Gabriel Bermúdez, ????.
1724 : Juan Morín, perhaps French. ????.
1724-1726 : Gabriel Bermúdez, see above, ????.
1726-1743 : Guillermo Clarke, Irish Jesuit.
1743-1747 : Jaime Antonio Febre, ????, perhaps French.
1751 : Francisco Rávago, Confessor of King Felipe V of Spain, Jesuit.
Some 15 years later the Jesuits will be ordered to leave all the territories governed by Spain and Portugal.
1755-1761 : Manuel Quintano Bonifaz, ????
The day to day Head Librarians were:
1712-1714 : Gabriel Álvarez de Toledo y Pellicer, Seville born aristocrat,.
1715-1735 : Juan Ferreras y García, a priest.
1735-1751 : Blas Nasarre or also, Blas Antonio de Nasarre y Férriz,, cervantist, and prior of a convent in Galicia, but adscribing himself to the neoclassical tendencies of his time life, Member of the Royal Spanish Academy, :
1751-1783 : Juan Manuel de Santander y Zorrilla, Colegial del Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso de la Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, Canónigo Doctoral de la Santa Iglesia de Segovia, Member of the Royal Spanish Academy.
Some of Don Gabriel's poetic works were printed in 1744 by the rather roguish Salamanca University Professor of Mathematics and Astronomer Diego de Torres Villarroel,, under the title La Burromaquia,, accompanied by some 17th-century mystical style religious poems.
He was the author of a treatise on Historia de La Iglesia y el Mundo. He died in Madrid, aged 51.
