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History of the company/bank and archive description for Fundación Rio Tinto
History of the
company/bank:		 The Riotinto Company was founded in 1873 by a banking consortium when the Spanish copper mine of the same name, located in Huelva, was acquired and incorporated.
In 1954 the Riotinto mine and Company was bought by a new Spanish company called "Compania espanola de mines de Riotinto".
Archive description Records dating from 1873 to date, concerning mining, railways and other public projects related to mining ; accounting books and a large map and plan collection, both from the English and Spanish companies.

Finding Aids: Unpublished inventory

The Mining Historical File under custody at the Rio Tinto Foundation, is composed of a documentary reservoir that was generated by the different mining companies that were involved in the exploitation of Rio Tinto mines since 1873, the year in which the Matheson Consortium took care of it after its purchase from the first Republican Spanish Government, that is to say, the funds corresponding to Rio Tinto Company Limited, Compania Espanola de Minas de Rio Tinto, Union Explosivos Rio Tinto, Rio Tinto Patino, Rio Tinto Minera and currently, Minas de Rio Tinto ; and besides, the funds correponding to other mining companies located in province of Huelva, were incorporated because of the cessation of their activity, as well as the Sociedad Francesa de Piritas de Huelva (Valdelamusa), The Pena Copper Mines (Nerva), Sociedad Minera de Nerva, Electrolisis del Cobre (Concepcion), Minas de Silos de Calanas (la Zarza) and the Minas de Herrerias.

This documentary overall required an urgent and proper filing treatment, from a functional point of view as well as for the risk the documents were facing, exposed to high humidity levels in contact with ferric elements that alter its internal structure and permits the germination of flora and fauna in the files.

In view of this situation, it was decided to elaborate a Working Plan to organise the documentation, as well as a Rehabilitation Plan to be implemented in the building where the Files are to be held. We must bear in mind that the safety maintenance of the documents requires to take extreme measures regarding the cleanliness, protection against the natural light, humidity, fire, termites, gnawing, thieves, etc.

Steps and methodology followed to establish the organisation were those generally followed in the organisation of Company files, creating an own classifying list, defining all Series of requirements.

The documentation, inasmuch as its classification, is divided into three main groups : textual, image, and graphically. And it is physically distributed between two areas : Files and Library.

a) TEXTUAL DOCUMENTATION: Following are steps to follow for its Arrangement.

  • 1) Clearing up
  • 2) Classification
  • 3) Series formation
  • 4) File / Bundle creation
  • 5) Descriptive tools
  • 6) Computing tools
  • 7) Funding implementation
The total number of files and books available for investigation are the following:
  • Rio Tinto Mines (Personnel Section), 1,521 files.
  • Rio Tinto Mines (Historical Section), 42 files
  • Rio Tinto Mines (Management Section), 8 files
  • Rio Tinto Mines (complete), 1,992 books
  • Rio Tnto Mines (Topography Section), 871 books
  • Pena del Hierro (complete), 115 files
  • Pena del Hierro (complete), 5 books
  • Sociedad Minera Nerva, 1 file
  • Silos de Calanas, 1,031 books
In total : 5,587 units

The documentary typology of this textual documentation (in binded or unbinded books) is varied, it goes from the Series of very important personnel files (43,797 registries), to Circulars and Notices from the Management, passing from all specific series which are necessary for the documentary management of any Company : official letters and correspondence, census, Affiliation sheets, memeories, reports, projects, applications, contracts, daily reports, files, acts, regulations, stipulations, etc.

Regarding the thematic, it is divided into three main groups: Personnel Management, Economic and Technical.

b) DOCUMENTATION OF IMAGES: Likewise, the files corresponding to Rio Tinto mines counts with an extraordinary relation of photographs which form a collection ("Fototeca"), being one of the dependencies of the Files. Composed of 3,000 printed photographs and 2,000 negatives, of which the majority have a physical support in acetate and 99 glass plates.

The organisational phases are the following:

  • 1) Classification
  • 2) Clean up of Supports
  • 3) Creation of sections (departments)
  • 4) Creation and installation of files and albums (positives)
  • 5) Installation of negatives in metallic files
  • 6) Creation of description tools
  • 7) Computerisation of Tools.
The chronology of this documentation into images was introduced in 1875 up to date, and it provides an exact illustration from an industrial aspect (buildings, factories, "cortas", etc.) to a social - mining - community life of Huelva.

c) ILLUSTRATED DOCUMENTATION: Composed of about 60,000 documents in which maps, layouts, technical drawings are included.
This documentation is classified into five main groups : General Cartography (3,500 docs.), Mining Cartography (1,500 docs.), Machinery (45,000 docs.), Architecture (1,500 docs.) and Profiles, Sections and mine levels (8,500 docs.).

On June 1991 commenced its organisation as a result of an Agreement signed between the "Conserjeria de Obras Publicas y Transportes" and the "Fundacion Rio Tinto" for the constitution of a cartographic documentary reservoir which will take part of the Andalusian Historical Cartography Files ("Cartoteca Historica de Andalucia").

Following are steps to follow for its Arrangement.

  • 1) Classification and Arrangement
  • 2) Invenmtory
  • 3) Cataloguing
  • 4) Microfilming
So far, 4,300 cartographic documents have been catalogued under a Marc format for computer support. From this, 572 correspond to the incorporated documentary reservoir of the company "Sociedad Francesa de Piritas de Huelva" in Valdelamusa. An inventory of 1,600 documents have been made corresponding to the machinery group (although we had a previous record of 5,000 microfilms already catalogued, as varied planimetry).

The chronology is held from 1875 through the decade of 1980.

d) BIBLIOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTATION: The Library of the Rio Tinto Foundation never had a continued operating plan.

Up to 1993, the bibliographic conditions were deplorable. The books were kept in boxes or piled up without order on shelves, making almost impossible to draw up an inventory of it. Most of them were damaged because of the humidity, maltreatment, dust and bad maintenance conditions. The place was improper to held the bibliographic reservoir, being in certain cases, stored together with machinery, tools or other raw materials.

In view of this, we had an urgent need to organise the books so that they can be used an consulted by the Society.

The thematic related holds from a colonial novel (from the ancient English Library) to medical diffusion magazines, especially, books and magazines of technical content with certain relation with the mining industry (mining, metallurgic, geology, engineering, etc).

The oldest book is a Holy Bible from 1771, in a parchment cover, which is a printed writing on paper.

The total volume of this reservoir is estimated in 6,000 volume, approximately, of which 4,315 have been registered and 2,220 catalogued.

Following are tasks performed on this reservoir :

  • 1) Bibliography description (I.S.B.D.)
  • 2) Creation of main access items and secondary cards
  • 3) Systematic classification by subjects (C.D.U.) and by alphabetical order
  • 4) Creation in alphabetical order of a Catalogue : by authors, anonymous documents and subjects
It is also our purpose to implement an automation system in the Library adapted to consulting needs that permit a systematic search. This computerised system will provide a selective diffusion of the information (D.S.I.) and the cata- loguing with a public access line (O.C.A.P.) in other words, a quicker and better quality service.

To conclude, we are going to make a brief systhesis of the mining investigation and current status of Rio Tinto. The mining industry in the province of Huelva is a matter that surpasses the frame of the local or provincial historiography. We count with numerous material, signs from a past in which the ming industry represented the absolute centre of the social and economical activity.

Nevertheless, the progress in the investigation was not encouraging, even more, we could consider it as a precarious situation.

One of the reasons for this precarious situation in the mining investigation could be the slow development in the Economical University Centres of Andalusia, and basically, because those availability problems and the accessibility to the information resources.
Publications There is a number of publications about the Riotinto Company. The most significant and recent ones are:
  • Varon , Luis Gil : Mineria y migraciones 1873 - 1973. Cordoba 1984.
  • Mendoza , Antonion Gómez : El Gibraltar económico. Fundación Riotinto 1995.
and the Spanish translation of
  • Avery , David : Not on Queen Victoria´s Birthday. The Story of the Rio Tinto Mines. 1974. (Nunca en el cumpleanios de la Reina Victoria. Labor 1995).
Curiously, the first two monographic works on the Rio Tinto mines were initiated by foreign people, DAVID AVERY and CHARLES HARVEY
  • [ Avery , D. : Nunca en el cumpleanos de la Reina Victoria. Historia de las minas de Rio Tinto. Madrid, Labor Universitaria, 1985. (First edition in English from 1974)
  • Harvey , Ch. B. : The Rio Tinto Company. An economic history of a leading international mining concern 1073 - 1954. London 1981]
although we have to mention that some Spanish historians had dedicated a special attention to Rio Tinto and its manuscripts, we refer to the historians JORDI NADAL and ANTONIO MIGUEL BERNAL
  • [ Nadal , J. : El fracaso de la revolucion Industrial en Espana. Barcelona , Ariel , 1975
  • Nadal , J. : Andalucia, paraiso de los metales no ferrosos. 1981
  • Bernal , A.M. : Historia de Andalucia. Vol. VII. Barcelona , Planeta ].
It might be because, obviously, the head offices of the foreign companies were not located in our country, as well as the lamentable conditions presented by the documentary reservoir of the mining companies located in the Andalusian territory, most of them disappeared because the activity ceased.

In the particular case of Rio Tinto, still without Archive services, the access to the "documentation warehouse" was permitted to several investigators, so that they could use it for their works. This is the case of Father LUIS GIL VARON who in 1975 prepared his doctoral thesis about the Geography of the Rio Tinto population, published later

  • [ Gil Varon , L. : Mineria y Migraciones. Rio Tinto 1873 - 1973. Cordoba 1984 ].
To this effect, Professor FLORES CABALLERO´s works were published which compiled from the Bourbon rehabilitation of the mines to its sale
  • [ Flores Caballero , M. : Las antiguas explotaciones de Rio Tinto. Huelva 1981
  • Flores Caballero , M. : La rehabilitacion borbonica de las minas de Rio Tinto 1725 - 1810. Huelva 1981
  • Flores Caballero , M. : La venta de las minas de Rio Tinto. Huelva 1981
  • Flores Caballero , M. : La fiebre minera del XIX. Huelva 1981 ]
and LEONARD U. SALKIELD
  • [ Salkield , L.U. : Notes on the modern history of the Rio Tinto Mines. Unpublished Manuscript ]
who in 1970 submitted a paper to the International Mining Congress held in Leon, on the ancient human scum located in the Southwest of the Iberian Peninsula and of what calls more our interest, we know through other investigators some notes about the modern history of Rio Tinto mines.

Currently, with the creation of the FRT Mining Historical Archives, available for investigation, there are a lot of investigators who are working with our reservoir, first articles such as "El Gibraltar Economico" written by Professor GOMEZ MENDOZA or "Capitalismo minero y resistencia rural en el suroeste andaluz" written by FERRERO BLANCO have been already published.

  • [ Ferrero Blanco , M.D. : Capitalismo minero y resistencia rural en el Suroeste andaluz. Rio Tinto 1873 - 1900. Huelva 1993 ]
Other works will be edited shortly, among which it is worthy to point out "El mercado de trabajo en las minas de Rio Tinto" written by Professor ARENAS POSADAS, which is expected as the latest study about the labour relations in Rio Tinto.
Conditions of use According to the Archives Act of Andalusia for public companies. Open 8.00 to 15.00.

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