Spanish Authorities have opened an investigation into the theft of a 410-year-old pamphlet written by Galileo from the country’s national library 7 years after staff first discovered the priceless scientific pamphlet was missing and have been replaced by a copy.

The pamphlet titled ‘Sidereus Nuncius’ written in Latin and published in Venice in 1610, is believed to be the first scientific pamphlet published based on information collected using a telescope.

The theft and replacement were discovered in May 2014 when it was checked by conservationists who realised it was not an original. Yet it appears that Spain’s National Library (BNE), located in the capital Madrid continued to display the forgery as the staff did not inform their superiors.

In fact, the Spanish Ministry Of Culture and Sport has only just opened an investigation into the theft of the valuable pamphlet, which was considered one of the BNE’s collections jewels. It is not the first time it was stolen after it vanished from the library in 1987, but authorities successfully located it and returned it the following year in 1988.

The discovery of the theft a second time was made in 2014 when specialists at the BNE carried out a routine check on the pamphlet’s condition only to find that it was a high-quality forgery and not the original they had believed.

However, the team who made the discovery chose not to inform the head of the BNE and instead decided to investigate the case alone. The team reportedly checked who the pamphlet had been lent to between 1988-2014 and found that the pamphlet had passed through numerous hands.

Bizarrely that went on for four years, and it wasn’t until 2018, four years after the discovery, that Ana Santos, the BNE’s director, was made aware of the theft. However, it was not her staff at the BNE that informed Santos.

An unnamed American investigator told Santos that the original pamphlet had been stolen and forged sometime after the 1987 robbery.

According to Santos and her informant, the original copy was, in fact, returned to the library in 1988 following its theft the year before suggesting that the pamphlet was stolen and replaced with a forgery between 1988-2014. Santos reported the case to the Minister of Culture and Sports, Jose Manuel Rodriguez Uribes, who has arranged a meeting of the National libraries board of trustees for 31st March.

A spokesperson from the BNE told Newsflash that security protocols are being updated. New information regarding the case will be released after the meeting at the end of this month. No information about how the pamphlet was stolen has been made public yet.