El Centre de documentació de Televisió Espanyola a Sant Cugat

Abstract

This article describes the state of the documentary collection at the Spanish Television (TVE) station in Sant Cugat during its first years of broadcasting. Two conditioning factors of those first years are identified: as with any novelty, the historical transcendence of the television broadcasts was not initially recognized; there were also technical difficulties related with the multiplicity and short life of supporting mechanisms, which led to the loss of some material and the impossibility of viewing others. Since 1974, programs have been filed in video format but, even so, it should be mentioned that since 1977 the Sant Cugat documentary centre has a conveniently indexed and computerized archive where all documentaries in Catalan are saved.