Subnational disputed archives Around the case of the Autonomous Region of Madeira (Portugal)

The article discusses the phenomenon of «displaced archives», one of the most complex problems in contemporary Archival Science. While international cases have been well studied, the aim of this article is to analyze a subnational case, which is less addressed in scientific production, from the perspective of representation of these archives in finding aids. The article focuses on a specific case of a custody dispute over archives between the Autonomous Region of Madeira (ABM) and the National Archives «Torre do Tombo» (ANTT) in Portugal. Methodologically, this article is characterized by unobtrusive qualitative research techniques. The research used documentary and archival sources to explore stratragies for representing fonds or collections in dispute, based on data on content representation in finding aids published by ANTT and ABM. The results point to the fact that custodial entities have not made efforts to achieve a technically and scientifically reunified representation of information. The study concludes that it is important to develop literary warrants for the description of displaced archives.