The treatment of the collection of documents, a project launched coinciding with the commemorative events of the celebration
of the centenary of the Generation of '27, will preserve the legacy and promote education and research
The documentation includes not only archives of Rafael Alberti and Mª Teresa León but also of other important firms of the same literary and artistic generation such as Vicente Aleixandre, Max Aub, Cernuda, Piccaso, Miró or Neruda, among others.
The documents processed by SDA on behalf of the Foundation are of great historical value and can exceed 3,555, including letters, postcards and others.
The Documentary Services of the Free Zone of Cádiz (SDA) are working on the digitization work of the documentary archives of the Alberti Foundation, which has carried out this task to the experts of the Cádiz Consortium society on the occasion of the commemoration events of the centenary of the Generation of '27. This has been explained by those responsible for the Foundation, with its director Uberto Stábile at the head, and the delegate of the Free Zone, Fran González, during the presentation of the project that took place today at the Foundation's headquarters in El Puerto de Santa María. The event was also attended by the previous director of Participated Companies of the Free Zone and the current one, José Manuel Fedriani and Emilio Aragón respectively; the head of SDA, María José Brea; and the Councilor for Culture and vice president of the Alberti Foundation, Enrique Iglesias
With this project to treat its archives, which also includes the creation by SDA of a secure repository, the Foundation aims to preserve the documentation, promote cultural identity and encourage research and education, since it is a legacy of great historical relevance that not only houses documents of two great writers of the Generation of '27, Rafael Alberti and his first wife María Teresa León, but also has prestigious signatures from the literary and artistic world of that same period such as Vicente Aleixandre, Luis Cernuda, Max Aub, Piccaso, Miró and Neruda, among others.
Among the documentation treated, it is worth highlighting the variety of physical supports and disparity in content of the collection: hand-painted postcards on cork, letters that include poems, letters in different languages, including Romanian or Dutch, details that give the collection a unique and particular value of great interest to researchers.
With all this, the project carried out by the Documentary Services of the Free Zone is large-scale and is being carried out in phases. The work includes the digitization of the documents that make up the fund, the creation of a secure digital repository and, in future phases, the development of a platform for access by the general public.
In a first step, the poet's correspondence, letters and postcards, more than 3,555 epistolary documents in a total of six databases have been analyzed and unified into a single database to proceed with digitization with meticulous work by documentary and computer experts.
In this way, with the help of a tool based on Artificial Intelligence, parameterized by SDA's documentary technical staff and with the support of IT technical staff, the information necessary to complete the eighteen fields that make up the database has been extracted from each of the letters and postcards: date, sender, recipient, brief summary of the content, person and works named, as well as other information related to the physical support of the document: measurements, state of conservation, number of pages, etc. The procedure culminates with the electronic storage and delivery to the Foundation of the resulting files. The documentation is being preserved using appropriate material for each of the formats.
The delegate of the Free Trade Zone of Cádiz, Fran González, explained that “this work of Documentary Services is very thorough and carried out by expert hands and that, although it is the usual SDA standard, in this case it takes on more meaning because it involves documents of great historical and cultural value.” “The analysis of more than 3,500 documents from Rafael Alberti's correspondence has been carried out carefully and the experts have used high-tech tools, which shows that our archiving service is prepared to compete with the best in its sector, something that has already been demonstrated with customer loyalty since its inception and with the acquisition of new users of its services during its 25 years of existence,” said the head of the Cádiz Consortium.
Fran González has highlighted that this work of SDA with the Alberti Foundation "opens a new line and makes visible the work of the entity and also contributes to preserving a legacy not only of the province of Cádiz but also of society as a whole due to the value that these documents of the Alberti Foundation hold. On the other hand, it demonstrates that the Free Zone is advancing in its economic and business and evidently social and heritage commitment."
For his part, the deputy mayor of Culture, Historical Heritage and Education of the El Puerto de Santa María City Council and second vice president of the Rafael Alberti Foundation, Enrique Iglesias Romero, thanked the involvement of the Free Trade Zone and its Documentary Services in a project that "not only guarantees the preservation of a unique legacy, but also projects it into the future with 21st century tools." The mayor has stressed that the digitization of the collections represents "a decisive step to progressively increase the level of cultural offering that an institution of this category must have, in accordance with the dignity and intellectual, artistic and social stature of the universal poet from Porto."
Likewise, he has pointed out that this initiative will strengthen the national and international projection of the Foundation, facilitate access to researchers and citizens and advance the objective of integrating into the Cultural Promotion Network of Andalusia, "placing the Foundation at the level of large cultural institutions of reference and consolidating El Puerto de Santa María as a fundamental enclave for the study and dissemination of the Generation of '27."
In addition to the archives of the Alberti Foundation that are being treated by SDA, the entity will take advantage of the commemorative events of the Generation of '27 to give visibility to the graphic work that is part of the Foundation's legacy and which is made up of 540 works.
The Rafael Alberti Foundation was established in 1993 and its main task, as a cultural institution, consists of safeguarding the poet's work, promoting his research and disseminating it, as well as highlighting the importance of the Generation of '27, to which Alberti belongs as one of its most prominent members, in 20th century Spanish literature.