Online listing leads Spanish police to century-old missing manuscript

Spanish police have recovered a 17th-century manuscript that disappeared from Valencia’s College of the Major Art of Silk more than a century ago after discovering it for sale online for €71,900, Euronews writes.

The book is made on green vellum, bound in velvet of the same color and decorated with bronze fittings.

The manuscript is a copy of ordinances signed in 1479 by Ferdinand the Catholic that elevated velvet-making from a trade to an art, granting the velvet-makers privileges and social recognition.

Agents from the Heritage Group of the National Police Unit assigned to the Valencian Community found the document during routine monitoring of online sales of cultural goods, police said in a statement.

The seller told investigators he did not know the document’s origin and said his father acquired it in the 1970s. The archive confirmed the manuscript disappeared between 1907 and 1909 and was never officially sold.