Portal de Murcia
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The General Archive of the Region of Murcia, under the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Environment, opens today (20:00 hours) the exhibition 'A legacy of knowledge.
180 years of the Institute Alfonso X the Wise of Murcia ', in which the historical avatars of this institution that was born in 1838 as Institute of Second Teaching of Murcia, and that became the third of its category in Spain and in the most important teaching center in the Region until the creation of the University of Murcia in 1915.
Throughout these almost two centuries the institute underwent changes of category, location and denomination (in 1940 it was when it adopted the name of Alfonso X the Wise) and all this history is collected in the more than 40 documents exhibited in the Archive in a extensive sample that today presented the general director of Cultural Assets, Juan Antonio Lorca, accompanied by the director of the center, Andrés Nieto.
Lorca recalled that "since 2001 the historical archive of the Alfonso X Institute, consisting of more than 2,000 boxes and around 200,000 documents, was transferred to the facilities of the General Archive of the Region, where the cleaning, identification, classification and description of the funds that compose it, an intense descriptive work that still continues due to the large amount of material ".
The organizational tasks allowed us to identify a total of twenty collections and documentary collections from different sources, "with original documentation dating from the 16th century to the end of the 20th century, which allows us to make a complete journey through the history of secondary education in Spain and in the Region of Murcia over more than two centuries, "added the head of Cultural Assets.
The most important and voluminous documentary series is that of academic records of students (1845-1973), which exceed 78,000 and of which the vast majority (about 75,000) belong to the center itself and the rest to other schools or institutes in the Region that existed during the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries.
Some of these students reached, subsequently, relevant positions in society.
Thus, the files of Juan de Cierva, inventor of the autogyro, the politician Mariano Ruiz Funes and the painter Manuel Avellaneda, among others, as well as an agricultural exam by José Echegaray, awarded in 1904 with the Nobel Prize for Literature, are shown.
Other curious documents are a degree of Bachelor of 1859, issued by the Literary University of Valencia (which depended on the Murcia center), an application of 1859 Pedro Diaz Cassou student to qualify for the Natural History prize, the first act meeting of the faculty (1838), the farewell text of Andrés Baquero as director of the center before becoming mayor of Murcia, as well as photographs of faculty cloisters and groups of students.
Likewise, textbooks and other publications (since 1874), cultural events programs, a copy of the 1961 institute's hymn and up to a schedule with the subjects of the 1975/6 course have been compiled.
All this is complemented by a vinyl made with photographs of students from the 40s and another that, as a chronogram, shows the changes of the center, as well as pieces of his museum such as a wolf, a crow and a sheep that was born with malformations and that were dissected.
In addition to the teaching activity, the Archive retains numerous documents related to the scientific and cultural activities of the Institute, since in addition to its laboratories and cabinets (botany, zoology, geology, agriculture), the Institute depended on the Botanical Garden of the Institute. Malecón, the first meteorological observatory that was in Murcia and the Provincial Library.
In the cultural panorama, in the second half of the 20th century, the choral mass and the magazine 'Brisas alfonsinas' also stood out.
The exhibition 'A legacy of knowledge.
180 years of the Alfonso X el Sabio de Murcia Institute can be visited in the General Archive until April 27, on Mondays and Tuesdays, from 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., and on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, from 8: 30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Source: CARM
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