An overview of the Salamanca Archive held at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland, within the context of the history of the Irish Colleges in Spain. From the late 16th century, Irish colleges grew up on the continent in countries where trade links with Ireland were already well established and where there was support for Catholic reform. Young men, seeking an education for the professions or training for the priesthood, gravitated to university centres in France, Spain, Portugal, and the Low Countries where small colleges were established to provide their formation .The archives of the Irish College in Salamanca came to Maynooth on the closure of the college in 1951. They comprise some 50,000 administrative documents dating from the foundation of the college in 1592 to the mid- 20th century. The collection also includes some papers from other Irish colleges on the Iberian Peninsula: Lisbon (flourished 1590-1834), Valladolid (founded 1592), Santiago de Compostela (fl. 1605-1769), Seville (fl. 1612-1767), Madrid (founded 1629), Alcalá de Henares (fl. 1649-1785).