Producer history
Throughout its history, the Diputació de Girona has lived through many periods defined by the general political situation at each given time. These periods can divided into seven phases. The first, the constitutional stage, went from 1812 (with the Cádiz Courts) to 1835, when the Diputació set up its headquarters in the former covent of El Carme (where it is still based to this day). The second, the development stage (1835-1909), was the time in which the Diputació defined its services and adopted its own policies. The third phase was marked by the Diputació¿s commitment to the first wave of political Catalanism (1909-1924). The fourth phase coincided with the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1924-1930). The fifth is the period of the Republic, when the Diputació de Girona was dissolved and took on the functions of a Delegated Commissariat of the Regional Government, and, from 1936, was marked by the Civil War (1931-1939). The sixth phase was the period of the Franco dictatorship, when there was a new roll-out of activity, particularly in terms of heritage and tourism (1939-1977). Finally, the seventh is the democratic era, which coincides with the recovery of Catalan self-governance, the redefining of the role of regional councils and the province in the context of autonomy, and the implementation of laws on territorial planning, from which the county councils were born.
The phase corresponding to the Republic was a period in which Carles Rahola, who worked for the Diputació, published a great amount of literary and historical works and gained widespread recognition. The events of October 6, 1934, ended in the imprisonment of the delegated commissioner at that time, Jesús Puig Pujades. The period after this was marked by uncertainty and instability. And in 1936, in less than nine months, six people held the position of chief commissioner. When the Civil War broke out, the Commissariat took over the telephone exchange of Ràdio Girona, as well as the electricity and water companies. On February 4, 1939, General Franco¿s troops entered Girona, and on February 7 a new provincial council was set up, born from the new regime.
With respect to the last phase, when democracy was restored, there have been two constant factors: the collaboration with the Regional Government, and the strengthening of the Diputació de Girona as a representative of Gironan counties and their municipalities.
2022 marked the two hundredth anniversary of the creation of the first council.
Archive history
Technical processing tasks began in late 1993, with the aim of starting the process of describing an initial set of photographs and analyzing their physical condition. The collection was processed and organised between 1993 and 1996.
Descriptive records were created for the images, and the collection was physically organised throughout 1995, following the classification chart to enable rapid physical location, pending a computer application. This enabled locating 80% of the images in the fonds, using the publications of the Diputació de Girona as a catalog. The final result was inevitably the creation of a catalog, unit by unit, in which each element corresponds to a computerized file and a digital image. A record number provided the link between each of the physical objects and the computer records. In 1996, the manual file system was replaced by a database, including the description of 12,000 prints from the Diputació de Girona Fonds.
From 1996 to the present day, image transfers are included in general lists attached to the transfer sheets. Since 2022, descriptive metadata are pulled directly from digitally generated images in order to load them into the image management program. Additions have also resulted from commissions assigned to photographers by the Centre itself.
By the year 2000, the collection had been partially described, with about 12,000 records, in a database at the catalog level. The catalog description was resumed in 2005 and continues to this day. From 2010 to 2012, the entire collection was put into permanent conservation, and the centre¿s preservation depository was relocated. The collection has been fully digitized in TIFF format, 300 dpi, RGB, 16 bits per channel master copies.
Since 2006, most of the images in the fonds can be found at the web address: www.inspai.cat.
Given that it is an open collection, the processing tasks are carried out constantly.
Details of entry
It is an open collection produced by the different departments of the Diputació de Girona, mainly through the contracting of professional services and the transfer of usage rights to the Diputació de Girona in writing, to authorize making explicit use of them.
