He archive of the former mayor of Madrid, Enrique Tierno Galvan can be consulted finally as of autumn, 11 years later which was deposited in the Public Library arus from Barcelona. Thus, in the coming months it is expected to close the concatenation of problems and nonsense since his transfer to the Catalan capital took place.
Tierno Galván was much more than the first democratic mayor of Madrid after the dictatorship: it was also The most wanted. Proof of this was his massive burial in La Almudena. The “old professor”, as he was popularly known, was in office between 1979 and 1986, the year of his death. However, his only son –Enrique Tierno Pérez-Relaño– decided to transfer his father’s file to Barcelona instead of bequeathing it to some institution in the Spanish capital.
Dissatisfied with the public facilities in Madrid, Pérez-Relaño, then resident in the Catalan capital, ceded the archive – without any financial transaction involved – to the Spanish Symbolic Grand Lodge. There is no record that the former mayor was a Freemason, unlike his son, who a few years after the assignment would become the first lieutenant grand commander of the Supreme Masonic Council of Spain. Or what would come to be the same, in his vice president.
The first contacts took place in 2011 at the lodge headquarters. However, its managers did not have technical knowledge or budget, so they decided that they would deposit the legacy in the Arús Public Library, located on Paseo de Sant Joan, specialized in social movements and with one of the best historical collections on Freemasonry. since its founder Rossend Arús was Grand Master of Catalan Freemasonry.
Thus, on March 13, 2012, the then mayor of Barcelona, Xavier Trias, signed an agreement with Jordi Farrerons, grand master of a Masonic lodge, and with the son of Tierno Galván. And from there, the library received thirty boxes in which, among other things, there were electoral material, correspondence with politicians like Willy Brandt or Victoria Kent, conference recordings, albums, eighteen filing cabinets and more than five hundred photographs.
mushrooms and budget
However, those responsible for what was the first public library in Barcelona had two problems. The first and most urgent was in the form of fungus. The file was partially infected. “Advised by conservation experts, we isolated it so that the infection would not spread to the rest of the library,” recalls David Domènech, librarian at Arús.
In the Arús they stopped the degradation of the file, but there were more inconveniences. In the agreement, neither the city council nor the lodge, co-owners of the fund, contributed money for its cataloging and the scarce budget of the Arús did not allow it either. In addition, they did not have the necessary technical knowledge. “We are not an archive but a library, we do not have the preparation to catalog archival collections & rdquor ;, admits Domènech.
Its managers took steps with institutions such as the National Archive of Catalonia and the council, although they were unsuccessful. And so time went by, up to nine years, in which the archive remained fallow on some shelves. An oversight that in October 2020 denounced race, the magazine of the Federation of Vein Associations of Barcelona (FAVB). Little by little things began to move during the second half of the current term, Ada Colau’s second in office.
On November 25, 2021 – three and a half months after the death of Enrique Tierno Pérez-Relano – a agreement between the Institute of Culture of Barcelona and the foundation Catalonia Europefor which the latter –created in 2007 by Pasqual Maragall– would be in charge of the archive, inventory and restoration, which would take place in the premises of the Arús Library.
A job coordinated by the document manager Fidel Bellmunt and that lasted four months in two different periods, between September 2022 and last February. During this time the project was designed and planned and the necessary technical material was provided. The resulting work has been 1,639 described documents, which have been installed in forty boxes.
singular background
Regarding its content, the Tierno Galván archive is a personal material mixsome documentation of your stage as a lawyer and plenty of material Popular Socialist Party (PSP), which he founded in 1974 and which brought together a more intellectual left that in 1978 joined the PSOE. “The most interesting part of the archive is the one on the PSP, because it contains internal material about the party,” explains Domènech.
“In order to study the character, – adds Bellmunt – it is a complementary background because it does not give an overall idea of Tierno Galván. It is, therefore, incomplete, although there are no better alternatives. There is family material that is only found in this collection, so, in this sense, it has a singular importance & rdquor ;.
In search of who appears in the photos
The work coordinated by Bellmunt was in charge of the description of the textual material, but there is a important part of the images which, to this day, continues pending to catalog. “The photographic part is, for now, an unknown quantity,” admits Domènech. For the description of these images, of an official nature, you need to identify who appears. Those responsible for the Arús do not know if the Madrid city council has a copy of them, which would facilitate their cataloging.
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It should also be clarified if there is a legal problem, since many arrived in boxes with the logo of the Madrid consistory and, therefore, its ownership is unknown. Both one thing and the other will be known when the pertinent documentary and legal consultation is carried out with the city council of the capital of Spain, still pending. “Until the images are described and we get out of legal limbo, these images will not be accessible,” says Domènech.
Some procedures that are expected to be carried out in the coming months, after the municipal elections. The idea is that in autumn the database will be ready and, together with the cataloged material, the archive can finally be consulted as Tierno Galván’s son wanted.