Historical archive

In 2007, the Ministry of Education granted a subsidy to the Instituto de Ciencias de la Construcción "Eduardo Torroja" (IETcc) of the CSIC in order to organize and disseminate the funds of its Historical Archive, especially those generated from its creation until the end of the 1960s.

This help was materialized through the Research Project HUM2007-65543/HIST: The documentary fonds generated by Eduardo Torroja in the IETcc as historical memory in the process of technological transference in Building Sciences.

In this way, the IETcc joined the initiative undertaken in 1998 by La Red de Bibliotecas del CSIC (CSIC Network of Libraries) for the recovery, computerisation and dissemination of the archives held in the different CSIC facilities, with the aim of facilitating the scientific community’s access to the contents of the archives, both personal and purely scientific, considered to be of great value for the history of Spanish science.

The History of Contemporary Construction will be able to be sustained on more solid bases to research the knowledge of the Spanish technological development in the field of construction through the initial activities of the IETcc seen from different perspectives: the available means to reach its purposes, the research proposals, the practical and theoretical applications of the obtained results, etc. and that are related to the role played by the CSIC, and especially by the IETcc, in the process of construction and institutional development of the scientific and technological policy during the Franco regime.

This archive contains a small number of Prof. Torroja’s personal documents, most of which are of an administrative nature, the result of the daily work carried out at the Institute: lines of research, courses, conferences, publications, visits, daily life, administrative operations, etc.

Prior to this initiative, thanks to the agreement signed between the Centro de Estudios y Experimentación de Obras Públicas (CEDEX) and the José Antonio Torroja Technical Office, son of Eduardo Torroja, the “Eduardo Torroja Archive” was set up in 2002 at the headquarters of the Centro de Estudios Históricos y Urbanismo (CEHOPU), where the files of a large part of the projects carried out since the beginning of the activity of its Technical Office in 1927 are preserved, and which is complementary to the one held by the IETcc.

The cataloguing of part of the Torroja Archive collections as well as the digitalization of some of the projects and documentation is available on the web: www.cehopu.cedex.es