UNESCO declares the documents of the Balmis Expedition Memory of the World

2023-06-09 19:17:24

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) has declared the documents of the Balmis Expedition, the documentary collections on the Around the World of Magellan and Elcano and the Simón Ruiz Archive, as Memory of the World, as reported this Friday the Ministry of Culture.

The documentation related to the so-called Balmis Expedition or Philanthropic Vaccine Expedition preserves the memory of a pioneering event in the history of science, vaccination against smallpox in Spain and its overseas territories at the beginning of the 19th century. This milestone was carried out by the doctor Francisco Javier de Balmis and by the nurse Isabel Zendal, the only woman on the trip. The documentation, which is preserved in the National Historical Archive and in the General Archive of the Indies, covers the years from 1800 to 1820 and contains the precedents and results of vaccination against smallpox.

In addition, UNESCO also recognizes the documentary collections on the Tour of the World by Magellan and Elcano (1519-1520), which includes collections from the General Archive of the Indies (Seville) and the National Archive of Torre do Tombo (Lisbon), and the Archive Simón Ruiz, a 16th-century merchant, whose collection is kept in Medina del Campo (Valladolid) and has been described and digitized by professionals from the Archivo de la Real Chancillería, a state archive of the Ministry of Culture.

The UNESCO Memory of the World, whose mission is to protect documents with special relevance in the history of humanity and offer guarantees of free access to them, preserves around 500 files. In addition to the three recently incorporated, it keeps other Spanish archives: the Ramón y Cajal Archives, the Calixtino Code, the General Archive of Simancas, the Llibre del Sindicat Remença (1448), the materials from the Europe-Japan Keicho-era mission, the Capitulations of Santa Fe, the Decree of the Royal Priest of León (1188), the Treaty of Tordesillas, the Vocabularies of Languages ​​of the New World, the Beatus of Liébana and the work of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún.