Augusto Vels graphology museum in the Casa de los Duendes, Puerto Lumbreras

Augusto Vels was largely responsible for graphology being recognized as a science

The Colección Museográfica de Grafología Augusto Vels is a small but interesting collection of items housed in the Casa de los Duendes in Puerto Lumbreras, and provides some insight into the life and work of a man who was instrumental in enabling graphology (the analysis of handwriting in order to identify character traits) to be recognized as a science.

Alfonso Velasco Andreo, better known as Augusto Vels, was born in Puerto Lumbreras in 1917, and obtained a degree in Psychology in Barcelona in the 1940s. It was then that he became interested in graphology, and in 1949 he began to use a system which he called “grapho-analysis”. This system was refined in 1961, when the first methodical approach to graphology in Spanish was published.

The collection in the Casa de los Duendes includes a recreation of Augusto Vels’ study and various of the items he owned, used and produced during the course of his career. There is also an interesting series of examples of graphological analysis applied to figures such as Charles Dickens, and Salvador Dalí,and although the details of Vels’ method are complex this display makes for a short but interesting stop on a walk around Puerto Lumbreras or an additional point of interest if visiting an exhibition in the Casa de los Duendes.

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