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As claimed in The Guardian

A transcription of the document is apparently available on JSTOR here, the section "Pesquisa Del Comendador Francisco de Bobadilla".

I cannot read Spanish and otherwise lack expertise to form any opinion on whether the document seems genuine.

Does anyone here know if the document is genuine? Or can you form any kind of impression or opinion based on the JSTOR source?

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  • I haven't found much in English beyond the guardian article (in particular no translation), and the Spanish-language book is not (yet) widely cited. The guardian article only quotes the author of the book iirc. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary corroboration.
    – Colin
    Commented Feb 1, 2016 at 5:35
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    This hardly seem like an "extraordinary claim" to me, since it comports well with existing knowledge. The work by Consuelo Varela and Isabel Aguirre appears to be fairly widely cited in relevant literature (i.e. not newspaper) too.
    – Semaphore
    Commented Feb 1, 2016 at 6:48
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    I think any claim of "legendary document stumbled upon in archive" require.s corroboration. 21 citations for such a recent book perhaps ain't bad, but none of those publications themselves have many citations.
    – Colin
    Commented Feb 1, 2016 at 13:14
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    The archivist Isabel Aguirre transcribed the actual report, so this "claim" is prima facie corroborated. And how is it legendary? The claim is "report filed by an agent of the Spanish government was discovered in the archives of the Spanish government". A relatively routine event, to be honest.
    – Semaphore
    Commented Feb 1, 2016 at 14:03
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    No, it really isn't. The original document is presumably still at the archive, and no one is going to go out of their way to "corroborate" something not in dispute. Actually, the idea that a head of department at the Archivo General de Simancas (an official institution) would conspire with a respected scholar and a major publishing house to forge a historical document (that's neither legendary nor particularly unusual despite exaggerations to the contrary) is simply incredible. Especially in the absence of any evidence.
    – Semaphore
    Commented Feb 1, 2016 at 16:51

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