Marbella's long-serving municipal archivist set to retire

Marbella’s municipal archivist Francisco Asis López has announced that he will be retiring from the job which he has done for 37 years in February 2024. He has been in charge of Marbella’s municipal archives, and is still working on a website where "thousands of historical documents" can be found directly.

Leaving his job is "a contradictory feeling" he said and added, "A stage in my life is coming to an end, although there are still unfulfilled objectives."

López went on to say, "The archive was set up as a service in practice and should have been staffed with both personnel and an administrative hierarchy. There is only one archivist and there is no possibility for others to have a proper administrative career to aspire to promotion. It is sad because when I joined in early 1987 I was required to know about archiving, and now it is only an administrative position.”

Marbella's archives are spread between four municipal offices. "The town hall office is hardly noticed. We are like a field hospital.” He said that some of the records, which began in the 15th century, have not been well preserved over the centuries, although more recent ones have been stored better.

"The tourist boom is reflected in the documentation preserved up to 2013 which shows how the town has grown. It is an impressive number of files," López said of the records that are kept in the building on Calle Portada. The rest of the files are divided between the management archives and the archives in the Horizonte building.