Where nothing is forgotten

Have you ever asked yourself what your ancestors were like, how they looked one another in the eye, how they dressed, how they laughed? And that part of Palma you love walking in so much – was it always like that, or did it change over the years (and centuries) in ways that would most likely surprise you?

For more than twenty years now Arxiu del So i de la Imatge de Mallorca has incessantly unearthed treasures in the form of photographic, filmographic and sound archives. Little time capsules that speak to us of our roots.

The ASIM archive, which offers free access to all citizens, came into being in 1999, promoted by a group of people “who were beginning to worry about the island’s photographic heritage,” explains Xisco Bonnín, the photographer and art historian at the forefront of this small army of guardian whose mission it is to find and recover high-value documentary archives. Some of the oldest photographs in this archive date back to the year 1880, and they transport us to a Mallorca that no longer exists.

“You always have to be on the lookout, and tune your hearing,” says Xisco. Sometimes the material reaches us through people who know that some archives are in danger. But other times, we are the ones who detect an important reserve and we go out looking for it.”

One of the pillars underlying the photography section of ASIM is the Rul·lan Archive. A portrait photographer born in Palma in 1896, Gaspar Rul·lan opened his first studio in the city in the twenties. A man with a restless spirit, he was one of the first to introduce colour photography to Spain, and he was also a precursor of what we now know of as street photography, or urban photography. The archive, which was acquired for a symbolic price, has been studied and digitalized, but not 100% of it, as there are over 100,000 negatives.

As for the filmography section, the oldest film conserved – which can be consulted digitally – is entitled La Fiesta del pedal, from 1917, showing a multitudinous cycling outing from Palma to El Arenal. The films shot in Mallorca constitute a vital source of information when documenting our past. The jewels kept on the shelves of ASIM include an advertising film from 1930 – “very curious,” according to Xisco – on the preparation of the ensaimada.

Another of the archive’s missions is to safeguard the oral history and tradition of our grandparents and great-grandparents. With reminiscences of the songs sung by slaves on the cotton plantations of the United States, conserved here are the tonades de feina, popular songs of the people who worked on the land. And also the rondaies mallorquines, fairytales set on the island, or glosses, a kind of popular satirical poem, which are also sung.

Without realising it, some families inherit valuable documentary and historical material, “but they guard it so jealously that they don’t want to donate or sell it,” asserts Xisco Bonnín. In these cases, if ASIM considers it is valuable in documentary terms, they offer to [...]

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