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The Episcopal Public Library of Barcelona or the Episcopal Public Library of the Seminary of Barcelona, also called Biblioteca Pública Episcopal de Barcelona (BPEB) in Catalan and Spanish, or Biblioteca Pública Episcopal del Seminari de Barcelona in Catalan and Biblioteca Pública Episcopal del Seminario de Barcelona in Spanish, is the library located in the Conciliar Seminary of Barcelona. It was founded in 1772, and it is the oldest preserved public access library in the city of Barcelona. It houses a large collection of old and modern books, with a special focus in the fields of theology, ecclesiastical sciences and the Bible, philosophy, arts and humanities, with a total of 360,507 volumes. Among these, there is a collection of 95 incunabula and 625 manuscripts, some of which are written in Arabic, the oldest being from the 14th century. Also important is a collection of approximately 10,000 gosos, ranging from the 17th century to the present.

The BPEB belongs to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Barcelona and is the central library for the Archdiocese. It forms part of the library system of the Ramon Llull University and collaborates with the Collective Catalogue of the Catalan Bibliographic Heritage.

History
The library was built in 1772 by Bishop Josep Climent i Avinent, and two libraries were merged: Old Seminary Conciliar Library (or Bishop's College), created in 1593, with the Library of the College of Our Lady of Bethlehem, of the Society of Jesus, founded in 1545. Its original location was on the La Rambla in Barcelona. It received the name "Pública" after the Pragmatic Sanction of 2 April 1767, promulgated by King Charles III of Spain, which decreed the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Kingdom of the Crown of Spain, the occupation of their buildings and the confiscation of all their assets, including libraries. Most of them, including those in Barcelona, ended up in the hands of the nearest Council Seminaries. Finally, "per justificar davant del poble que es donava utilitat a totes aquestes biblioteques, l’Estat manà als bisbes receptors que fessin tot el que fes falta per fer públiques les biblioteques dels Jesuïtes, i es va pactar un sou per a contractar bibliotecaris". As for the Our Lady of Bethlehem College itself, something different happened in Barcelona, since "los colegios solían seguir siendo centros de enseñanza. En Barcelona, el colegio de Belén se convirtió en el Seminario Conciliar de Barcelona..."

On 25 June 1775, Fèlix Amat de Palou i Pont received a royal appointment as the first librarian of the Episcopal Public Library of Barcelona. However, it was not until January 1776 that the Library opened its doors to the public, located on the second floor of the Seminary building. Félix Amat de Palou was a librarian between 1775 and 1785. Between 1785 and 1803 he wrote his Ecclesiastical History and made the first inventory of all the books in the library. It was precisely in 1785 that the first serious inventory of the entire library collection, the Inventario de los libros contenidos en la Biblioteca, was made by the then librarian Joaquín Nicolás Rincón. The classification of the Library was divided into 8 large sections, with a total of 16,976 volumes.

His successor was his nephew Ignasi Torres i Amat de Palou (1768-1811), who was a librarian between 1795 and 1808, and who designed and initiated the famous Dictionary of Catalan Writers, or Diccionari d'escriptors catalans, in Catalan. In Spanish it was called the Memorias para ayudar a formar un diccionario crítico de los autores catalanes y dar alguna idea de la antigua y moderna literatura de Cataluña, and was finished in 1836 by his brother Fèlix Torres i Amat de Palou, who was also a librarian in BPEB. The brothers installed a room in the library for Catalan authors, along with the librarian Ignasi Palaudàries (who was a librarian in BPEB between 1816 and 1824) and the Bishop of Barcelona Pau de Sitjar i Ruata. During his mandate the first internal regulation of the Library was established, on 27 August 1816. It was an annex to the library and was run separately. It was first made public as the Library of Catalan authors in the edition of the Diario de Barcelona of 15 November 1819.

In February 1882, the Seminary moved from La Rambla to the new building on Diputació Street, outside the city walls, designed by architect Elies Rogent i Amat, where it is now located. The books of the BPEB were packed up and moved to the basement of the new building and remained there for fifteen years, until thanks to Cardinal Salvador Casañas i Pagès, the library was installed in the space it currently occupies. The library was not finished until 1924.

During the Spanish Civil War, books were deposited in the Library of Catalonia (Biblioteca de Catalunya in Catalan), although some important collections were burned. More than 500 manuscripts were transferred to the Library of Catalonia in four periods: between 2 and 4 July 1937; between 2 and 5 November 1937; on 15 November 1938; and finally on 10 January 1939. All these manuscripts were returned to the BPEB on 9 January 1943, with Josep Gros i Raguer as director.

When it returned to the Seminary, the BPEB was installed on the ground floor of the building and was catalogued again by Jaume Barrera i Escudero (1879-1942). The librarians Àngel Fàbrega i Grau (1921-2017) and Antoni Briva i Mirabent (1926-1994) moved it again to the first floor. Before the Spanish Civil War, specifically in 1916, the Library already had 50,000 volumes. After the Civil War, the Library began operating again on 10 December 1940, although it was not until 22 February 1944 that the reading room was inaugurated, with a lecture by the then Director of the Central Library of the Diputació de Barcelona. Later, in 1964, it was moved to the first floor of the Seminary building, where it is located today.

Josep Maria Martí Bonet, librarian from 1971 to 2018, with the help of the Faculty of Theology of Catalonia and the Seminary itself, hired librarians for the cataloging of the more than 370,000 books currently in the BPEB. Since then professional librarians work at the BPED and are responsible for the management of the Library, as well as the director of the Governing Board of the Seminary. In 2011, the reformed Library's Reading Room was inaugurated. Covering 242 square metres, it has 47 reading points and more than 11,000 volumes with free access. On 16 March, 2016, the also reformed restricted access storage deposits of the Library was inaugurated.