In the coming months, Historical Heritage will incorporate this documentation into the new Archive portal, on which is already being worked on
The Municipal Archive digitizes the minute books of the Plenary and the Permanent Commission for the period 1849-1973The Municipal Archive digitizes the minute books of the Plenary and the Permanent Commission for the period 1849-1973
The City Council will request a subsidy from the Ministry to cover the costs of restoration and digitization
The Municipal Archive continues to make progress in the digitization of its documentary collection, thus favouring its consultation by citizens. The latest documentation that has undergone this digitization process has been the minute books of the Plenary and the Permanent Municipal Commission for the period between 1849 and 1973, as detailed by the Councilor for Historical Heritage, Ana Pellicer.
The councillor explained that "at the end of 2021, nine boxes with minute books were delivered to a company specialized in document management, which has been in charge of digitizing these funds following the regulations established by the Generalitat Valenciana". Specifically, 29-minute books of the Plenary Session between the years 1849 and 1973 and 14 of the Permanent Municipal Commission from the period 1924-1972 have been worked on.
These minute books "provide very valuable information on historical events that occurred in this period, on how Benidorm was organized and managed or on the vicissitudes that the municipality had to face in those decades, and that can be of great use to researchers and historians as well as all those interested in learning more and better about the evolution of our city”.
Pellicer has reported that "just as we have done with the most relevant digitized funds to date, the intention is that all this documentation is available to the public for public consultation and online." Although previously digitized documents can be consulted on the municipal website, "we intend that the new collections, together with the previous ones, be incorporated directly into the Municipal Archive's own and exclusive portal, which is already being worked on and will be equipped with all the necessary technical features to include different types of documentation and funds”.
The person in charge of Historical Heritage has specified that "in addition to investing in the creation and configuration of this Archive portal, the Department, continues with the extensive digitization work that began in 2019 and also attending the calls for funds that other administrations are launched for this purpose”.
In this sense, she has advanced that "in the next few days and once the digitization of the minute books of the Plenary and the Permanent Municipal Commission has been completed, a subsidy is going to be requested to Conselleria for the digitization and restoration of archival documentation with an age of 50 years or more”.
Currently, there are more than 5,000 documents, files and tourist brochures digitized to guarantee their cataloguing and conservation and make them more accessible to citizens. A selection of these documents are hosted on the municipal website www.benidorm.org, where they can be consulted as the books of the Major Patron Saint Festivals of the 40s and 50s, the numbers of the Municipal Bulletin of the Villa published between 1959 and 1961, the Municipal Record Book of 1732, the 39 posters of the Festival Song Contest the copies of the Magazine of Virgen del Sufragio published in 1929 and 1930, and the facsimile edition of Benidorm Town Charter, published by the City Council of Benidorm in 1988, with translation into Spanish and extensive preliminary study by Rafael Alemany Ferrer, María Luísa Cabanes Catalá, Antonio Couto de Granja and José Hinojosa Montalvo.