Location
How to get there:
Municipal buses: lines 4 and 14
Schedule
Monday to Friday from 9:00 to 14:00 hours.
Attention to users:
Make an appointment on your phone or contact email.
Contact
Address:
Calle Marqués de la Ensenada nº12, 39009 Santander (Cantabria)
Phone:
Presentation
The main mission of the Documentation Centre of the Port Authority of Santander is to ensure custody, conservation and access to the documentary heritage generated by the institution since its most recent background, dating back to 1872 with the creation of the Junta de Obras del Puerto de Santander, and which has led to the creation of the most complete and homogeneous fund of the contemporary historical memory of our port.
Among the processing and document management tasks it carries out to manage the funds in its charge, the Center, in addition to attending the consultations of its internal users, makes accessible its documentary heritage, within the limits established by the regulations, to people who wish to do research work: students, researchers, professionals of the port field, etc.
Likewise, the Documentation Centre, in addition to supporting the external information requirements of the Port Authority itself, acts as a repository for the fund of publications edited by the institution.
Documentary funds
The documentary funds hosted by the Centre are organized in four major areas
General Administrative File
The main documentary collection deposited in the Center is the one produced by the Junta de Obras del Puerto since the late nineteenth century and the agencies that followed it in the administration of the port, the Port Board and the Port Authority; which is currently configured by more than 22,000 files spread across more than 8,600 installation units.
In addition, the Documentation Center guards two other but complementary collections: the documentary funds of the Organization of Port Works (OTP), a precedent of the current Anonymous Port Workers Management Societies (SAGEP); and part of those produced by the Fishermen's Guild of Santander, the managing entity of the former Fish Market.
Map Library
The collection of maps and plans preserved by the Documentation Center is one of the fundamental pieces of the documentary heritage of the Port of Santander, since it reflects its physical transformation from the final stretch of the nineteenth century to the present day, with details of all the works, the different expansion projects - developed or aborted - and endless material also of interest for the study of the spatial evolution of the city of Santander and its Bay. Currently, the fund consists of 1,800 plans to which are added, in custody, those corresponding to the APS Delineation Service.
Media Library / Photo Library
The Documentation Center has an interesting collection of audiovisual character in which its photographic backgrounds stand out, valuable for acting both as a record of the activities carried out in the port and as an expression of the artistic creativity associated with the port maritime universe.
These funds are composed of the collections gathered by the Port of Santander over the years, both internal production and such outstanding authors as Angel de la Hoz, Antonio Cuesta, Joaquín and José Luis Araúna, Jorge Fernández, José Miguel del Campo, Pablo Hojas, Pedro Palazuelos, Samot and Zubieta among others, who offer testimony, among other issues, of the historical evolution and development of the port infrastructure and the Santander Maritime Front.
This background, which currently has more than 10,000 digitized photographs, is organized into two sections: the "Antigua", which groups the images before 1975, and the "Moderna", which includes the images after 1975.
Library / Newspaper Archive
Another of the documentary resources available to the Center is a specialized library, mostly of maritime and port content (engineering, administration and law, trade, shipbuilding, ships and navigation, memories of national and international ports...), equipped with about 7,500 volumes.
To this unique bibliographic background adds the hemeroteca, formed by a collection of more than 300 titles of national and foreign specialized newspapers and magazines, and a collection of digitized news published in newspapers and magazines, mainly local, related to the Port of Santander.
Publications Deposit
The Documentation Center also acts as depositary and distributor of publications published by the Port Authority of Santander, an instrument of the port's divulgative and cultural action. Among the tasks associated with this activity is the divulgation and exchange of books with libraries of local, national and international public and private institutions.
The fund consists of some 200 publications between history books, economics, art and photography catalogues and digital productions. The most significant part of the fund consists of the Navalia programme which, articulated around four collections (Navalia Visual, Navalia Técnica, Biblioteca Navalia and Navalia Aula) has helped to expand and renew a bibliographic space for the reflection and revelation of Cantabria's maritime past and present.