The La Orotava Archive: the history of a city on 2,648 meters of shelves.
The Municipal Archive of La Orotava, which preserves documents from 1472 to the present day, combines history and modern technologies, becoming the first in the Canary Islands to collect oral histories.
In La Orotava, there is a place where history lives – the city archive. It is located on San Sebastián Street and is open to everyone: both ordinary people and researchers. It contains important documents created by the city council, as well as those donated to the city.
Imagine: these documents occupy as much as 2,648 meters of shelves! This is 19,363 different cases and papers. Mostly, these are municipal documents, from the 19th century to 2023. But there are also older items, such as family archives, the oldest of which dates back to 1472. In addition, thousands of audio and video materials, administrative books, photographs, posters, and programs are stored here.
The archive has a small library with books on the history of the city and archival science. There is also a collection of old seals, pens, typewriters, and other equipment that was once used in the city council.
A special pride is 84,190 photographs, most of which have already been digitized. They show how the city has changed in the last decades of the 20th century. Currently, archivists are actively working to digitize all these materials, as well as old lists of residents, which are of great interest to people who study their family history.
The archive received many valuable documents as a gift from ordinary people. For example, there is a wonderful collection of old photographs of the La Florida district, which show how it has developed from the 1930s to the present day. There is also a collection of photographs that have been collected for over half a century, and even old issues of Hoy magazine from 1933-1934, which wrote about the city.
Recently, the archive completed the arrangement of documents of Presbyter Vicente Nepomuceno and his family. These are very interesting papers dating from 1655-1944.
The La Orotava archive shows how important it is to combine history and modern technology to share knowledge. Most often, people come here in person, and mostly they are residents of La Orotava. But recently, more and more researchers from other cities and countries are interested in this archive.
Interestingly, the La Orotava archive became the first in the Canary Islands to start collecting and preserving oral histories as an important source for studying history. Since 2021, it has been storing recordings of interviews and other audio documents to preserve the memory of the past and local heritage.