The CDTE is regarded as one of the most important tourism documentation centres in the world, both for the number of documents it keeps and for their quality. Created in 1985, it is a Turespaña service that collects, analyses, safeguards and disseminates information and documents on tourism, offers personalised service, and provides thematic bibliographies.
Consult the Documentation Centre catalogue
It has nearly 140,000 computerised documentary references that can be consulted through the OPAC, relating to tourism posters and brochures, magazines and monographs specialising in tourism, institutional publications and legislation, many of which can be downloaded from the catalogue itself.In addition, in the OPAC's Collections section, the user can view samples of these documents, such as tourism posters, articles from the Journal of Tourism Studies, access to the institution's black and white photography archive, historical tourism statistics and official guides to hotels and campsites. As Spain is a member state of the World Tourism Organization, it receives all the documentation published by said organisation.
What documents can you consult in the catalogue?
Monographs
You can consult both modern books and books from the old Reserve Fund. The predominant theme is tourism, although documents on topics related to tourism (geography, nature, art, law, etc.) are also included.
Magazine articles
Tourism trade magazines are dumped into the CDTE, and all their articles are catalogued and available for consultation in the CDTE.
Tourist posters
You can consult the tourism promotion posters, from the first to the latest campaigns. This service is available from the OPAC and also from the section on collections, which shows selected groups of interest to users.
Tourist brochures
You can consult the tourism promotion brochures, from the first to the latest publications. The image on the cover is an approximate reproduction of the document, which can be consulted at the CDTE headquarters.
Legislation
The tourism legislation of the State Administration, the autonomous regions and the European Union is freely accessible.
Audiovisual materials
Of tourist interest in digital format, promotional videos, both from Turespaña and other national and foreign organisations dedicated to tourism promotion.
Photo archive
Since 2014, the CDTE has managed the historical archive and the photographic image bank of Turespaña. And the collection donated by Josip Ciganovic, a photographer who worked at the Ministry of Information and Tourism.
The Spanish Tourism Documentation Centre (CDTE) provides the following services:
Advice on the existence and use of specialised tourism information sources.Bibliographic catalogue specialised in tourism. Customised bibliographic information according to the user's profile and needs.Access to the Documentation Centre's collections during opening hours and through the OPAC's User Services.Collection acquisition request service: the Documentation Centre acquires collections by its own initiative or at the suggestion of users. You can send a request directly through the OPAC (User Services – Requests).User training sessions.
It is also committed to:
Providing information and attention from qualified personnel in different formats: face-to-face, telephone, post, email and chat.Daily updating of the specialised tourism catalogue. Guaranteed access to the Documentation Centre's collections, both at the Centre itself and via the website.Locating the bibliographic collections in our catalogue or in other external catalogues.Processing purchases of requested materials according to users' needs and budgetary resources available.
Thesaurus
A unique worldwide catalogue of related terms frequently used in the tourism industry, resulting from the work carried out by the Spanish Tourism Documentation Centre (CDTE) over its nearly 50 years of history.It features two indexes, one hierarchical and the other rearranged to facilitate the location of keywords and equivalents.
Download Thesaurus