Delving into my archives…

When I went to speak Gibraltar’s National Archivist to record the interview for Episode 2 of the Gibraltar Stories Podcast, it was, in fact, my second time visiting the archives. Back in November 2016 I paid Anthony Pitaluga a visit, to write an article about his team of volunteers who help him with all the digitizing of all the primary source material in the archives. That article was for the online parenting magazine Mum on the Rock, and it is with their kind permission, that I’m reproducing it here:

Anthony Pitaluga

Paying it forward - Volunteering Gibraltar | Gibraltar National Archives

Did you know that there are enough documents stored in the Gibraltar National Archives that if you placed all the boxes end to end, they would stretch from the Frontier to Europa Point? That’s an awful lot of boxes containing documents dating back to when the first Queen Elizabeth was on the British throne.

The man tasked with looking after these historical treasures is Anthony Pitaluga, GIbraltar’s National Archivist. Along with a very keen team of volunteers and community care workers, Anthony takes his role as guardian of these historically significant artifacts very seriously.

Tucked away in a corner of the Convent are a series of rooms housing legal papers, old copies of the Gibraltar Chronicle and any article, letter or document deemed too important for Gibraltar to lose. The oldest document housed in the archives dates back to 1577 and there are literally thousands of documents kept from each century since.

Copies of every edition of the Gibraltar Chronicle can be found there from 1811 onwards. Sadly the first decade of the Chronicle’s print run was stolen, when the Colonial Government left the Rock so it’s first edition in 1801 isn’t there. But you can see the front cover of the paper printed the day after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

One thing you can be sure of in the business of archiving, says Anthony, is that you get more and more stuff coming in all the time. “Anything historical, cultural, fiscal or of value to the people of Gibraltar needs to be kept, but you can’t keep everything”. Even now, Anthony regularly sends his helpers out to take photographs of the buildings and streets of Gibraltar and collect leaflets and magazines to have a record of how Gibraltar is now, because this is the information which future generations will want to see.

So why does such a small place have so much in it’s archives? “Gibraltar is such an interesting place both in European and British history, the British are explorers and they ask questions”, says Anthony. Much of their findings can be seen in the archives. Also housed on the row upon row of shelves are court papers, police documents and the inquest in the attempted IRA bombing of the Rock back in 1988.

Slowly but surely many of the items in storage are being digitised so that they can been seen online. Documents such as censuses are a priority as when people research their family’s history, they want to be able to see a photograph of the actual entry where there descendants are noted down. So far 90% of the archives primary sources have been digitised but there is still a lot more still to do.

Anthony is assisted by a team of community care workers who have retired from their professional careers but still want to do something of value before they retire completely. Among them are a surgeon, a retired Deputy Chief Fire Officer and a dentist.

Alongside those helpers are volunteers who freely give of their time to assist with the preservation of documents and help with research. Anthony says they are so dedicated that he sometimes has to ask them to leave at the end of the day so he can lock up and go home himself!

When I visited the archives, two of Anthony’s regular volunteers were in the process of digitising one of the huge census volumes on a large scanner. Operating the scanner was Alfred Olivero. He is a retired electrical engineer and former union man. When he first retired he carried on working at the trades union on a temporary basis organising and scanning the union’s historical documents. It took him two years to complete that task.

After that, he decided to put on an exhibition on the effect of the 1936 - 1939 Spanish Civil War on Gibraltar. In July 1936, five thousand refugees arrived in Gibraltar in one day alone to escape the chaos across the border. Some had family connections to Gibraltar but many were Spanish and British citizens seeking safe haven on the Rock.

The Colonial Government at the time set up a refugee camp in the area of the racecourse (now the airport and runway) to house 800 - 900 of them, but many had to sleep rough in Gibraltar’s parks. It was while researching this historical event that Alfred came to use the archives, and pretty much never left. He says “it’s hard to go from a highly functioning work role to being retired with nothing to do”, the work he does at the archives benefits him and gives his days a purpose.

For Eddie Hammond, Alfred’s volunteering colleague, retirement from his television business brought depression after the initial thrill of no longer working and being able to take many holidays lost it’s appeal. After three years of retirement, Eddie says “I kicked myself in the butt and got out my old film making and photography equipment but it wasn’t enough so I helped at Community Care on the computers”.

After six years helping them, Eddie decided to go around many of Gibraltar’s churches and try to photograph their old records to preserve them for posterity. “Some of them were in a terrible condition” he says, but he wanted to save them before they disappeared forever. It was this work which led him to visit the National Archives and he too became a volunteer.

So far, the archive volunteers have digitised a large proportion of the Census entries for Gibraltar from 1771 onwards and editions of the Gibraltar Chronicle from 1811 to 1854. Eddie says “some people request to see the actual entry in the census and this makes it more accessible”.

The oldest document Eddie has scanned is the one from 1577, it related to the mayor of Gibraltar at that time when it was still under Spanish rule, and he says he learned an interesting fact about Gibraltar’s coat of arms while doing it. The difference between the Spanish version of the castle and key emblem and the Gibraltar version is that the blade of the key faces in the opposite direction. It is the interesting things which you can learn while working in the archive as well as the camaraderie which makes volunteering such a delight for these two gentlemen.

At present the Gibraltar National Archives are not looking for any new volunteer helpers but Antony Pitaluga is keen to make sure that people know the archive is open for anyone to access. If you are interested in researching anything to do with Gibraltar or it’s people please give him a call and arrange to visit. Tours can be arranged for small groups and information and pertinent documents can be found ahead of visits for anyone to see. School holidays are busy for them when University students return home and want help completing their assignments but term time is much quieter.

For more information on the Gibraltar National Archive, please check their website at: http://nationalarchives.gi