Simón Ruiz Archive (Medina del Campo, Spain)

The Simón Ruiz Archive is the only case of a documentary collection of a Spanish merchant-banker from the 16th century that has survived to the present day, which makes it an essential reference in all studies on world trade for that period, given that at that time the Spanish Monarchy was one of the great economic powers of the world. Many of the major events are mentioned or referred to, at greater or lesser extent, in the documentation of this archive and, likewise, many of the leading figures of commerce and finance of the time are quoted in it. Its commercial collections consist of 184 account books, more than 58,000 commercial letters delivered to hundreds of cities – mainly in Europe and the New World – 28,000 bills of exchange sent to 45 European financial centres, 200 listini or listings with international currency exchange rates, etc.