Second ArchivoyMemoria Conference
Account
On 22 and 23 June 2006, the headquarters of the Fundación de
los Ferrocarriles Españoles (Santa Isabel 44, Madrid) was the
venue for the Second "ArchivoyMemoria" Conference organised by
its Archivo Histórico Ferroviario (AHF) and the CSIC’s
Department of Anthropology.
This conference was set in the context of the agreement between
RENFE and the CSIC, by virtue of which the tributes left at
Commuter railway stations following the March 11 bombings in
Madrid were to be donated to the research project “The Grief
Archive”. The conference was born of the need to provide a
multidisciplinary forum to deal with practical and theoretical
issues relating to the role of archives in the social
construction of memory, with the aim of “building bridges”
between historians, anthropologists, archivists, literature
specialists, librarians and museologists, thereby forging links
between research projects and documentation and archive
professionals.
After the opening ceremony, which was conducted by the
Director-General of the FFE, Carlos Zapatero Ponte, and the
CSIC’s Deputy Director-General for International Relations,
Martín Martínez Ripoll, the conference took the form of three
different sessions, culminating in a concluding discussion which
served to summarise the activity.
The first session was devoted to documentation of the ephemeral,
during which Professor Jack Santino of Bowling Green State
University (USA), a member of the CSIC’s Group for
Anthropological Research on Heritage and Popular Cultures (Grupo
de Investigación Antropológica sobre Patrimonio y Culturas
Populares) and the author of several books, including Signs of
War and Peace (Palgrave 2001), spoke about his work on social
conflict and public symbols in Northern Ireland.
The second speech dealt with the Ephemera collection of the
Biblioteca Nacional de España (National Library of Spain). The
curator of this collection, Rosario Ramos Pérez, showed some
examples of documents that had no intention of continuing to
exist, but which now constitute a valuable source of research
information for historians, anthropologists and intellectuals.
She described some of the procedures used to classify, preserve
and catalogue these documents, tasks which got under way in 1991
and culminated in 2003 with a public exhibition and the
publication of a catalogue featuring more than 80,000 images.
Following on from a round table discussion of the memory of the
ephemeral, the Grief Archive team from the Department of
Anthropology of the CSIC’s Language Institut presented a
representative sample of the various documents that members of
the general public left at railway stations in Madrid in
response to the 11-M bombings. The presentation was made by the
researchers Carmen Ortiz García, Cristina Sánchez-Carretero,
Paloma Díaz Mas, Pedro Tomé Martín, Antonio Cea Gutiérrez and
Luis Díaz G. Viana.
Following the conference schedule, the second session focused on
the importance of business archives. Jordi Roca Girona of the
Universidad Rovira i Virgili explained the role played by
business archives in the construction of local identities, which
tied in with the round table presented by the Head of Documental
Heritage of the Fundación de los Ferrocarriles Españoles,
Domingo Cuellar, and with the participation of some of the
members of the Economic and Business Archives working group of
the Asociación de Archiveros de la Comunidad de Madrid (AAM,
Association of Archivists of the Madrid Region). The dynamizing
aspects of business archives and researchers were discussed by
Raquel Letón Ruiz (Archivo Histórico Ferroviario), Manuel
Carnicero Arriba (RUMASA Archive), Pilar Rivas Quinzaños
(Archive of the Fundación Colegio de Arquitectos de Madrid
(Association of Architects of Madrid)), María Sánchez Rodríguez
(ENRESA Archive) and Leticia de Castro Leal (REPSOL YPF
Archive).
The second day of the conference began with a speech given by
the Ministry of Culture’s Deputy Director-General for State
Archives, José Ramón Cruz Mundet, who spoke of the commitment to
recovering historical memory in public archives, particularly in
the light of the new Law regarding the declaration of 2006 as
the Year of Historical Memory, emphasising the important role
that the archives play in this respect.
The schedule was completed with two consecutive round tables
that formed part of the third session devoted to the
presentation of research projects in progress and new lines of
research. Representatives of various disciplines explained and
discussed the procedures and working methods used by different
institutions in historical, anthropological and literary
research. Antonio Castillo Gómez, a lecturer at the Universidad
de Alcalá and the person in charge of the Seminario
Interdisciplinar de Estudios sobre Cultura Escrita (SIECE,
Interdisciplinary Seminar on Studies of Written Culture) talked
about the project on the Network of Popular Writing Archives,
and José Monteagudo Robledo of the Asociación del Bajo
Duero-Zamora (Bajo Duero-Zamora Association) focused on the same
topic in his speech. Another line of literary research devoted
to writing was dealt with by Cristina Jular Pérez-Alfar, who
explained the political uses of writing through medieval
documents, as part of the project Clientela y Redes Locales en
la Castilla Medieval (CRELOC, Clientele and Local Networks in
Medieval Castille).
Julio Cerdá Díaz, a lecturer at the Universidad de Alcalá and
director of the Arganda del Rey Town Archive, described the
interesting and significant challenges that archives are facing
as a consequence of technological innovation. The session was
completed with the presentation of memory through photographs of
Spanish concentration camps in France after the Civil War, a
topic that was presented by Francie Cate-Arries of the College
of William and Mary (USA); and finally, Manuel Morales Muñoz, of
the Universidad de Málaga, described the project and concerted
effort devoted to recovering historical memory in Andalusia.
The conference ended with a concluding discussion chaired by the
director of the Documentation and Railway History Archive
Department of the Fundación de los Ferrocarriles Españoles,
Miguel Muñoz Rubio. The numerous attendees, archivists,
librarians, historians and researchers concluded that the
conference had been highly productive, having provided an
excellent opportunity to exchange experiences and discuss the
results of a wide range of research projects.
Raquel Letón Ruiz
Archivo Histórico Ferroviario
Fundación de los Ferrocarriles Españoles