The Diário de Notícias (DN) archive will be classified as a national treasure, according to a decree approved this Thursday by the Council of Ministers.
The approved decree classifies the Diário de Notícias archive, which covers a time arc from 1864 to 2003as “archival property of national interest”, a designation that is equated to a national treasure.
According to the decree, to which the Lusa agency had access, the classification includes “the archival and photographic assets currently in the custody of the Global Media Group company”, namely, the administrative archive and the “redacting archive”, as well as the ” thematic dossiers”. ., press clippings, censorship clippings, original drawings by countless individuals.”
And also covered “photographic nature heritage”including “glass and film gelatin and silver salt negatives, historic glass plates, black-and-white and color paper proofs, microfilm reels, and electronic documents.”
This newspaper reported on all the major national and international events, namely the fall of the Monarchy and the establishment of the Republic in 1910, the Great Wars, the military coup of May 28, 1926 and the advent of the Estado Novo, the April 25, 1926. 1974, and the accession of Portugal to the European Economic Community, the attack on the Twin Towers in New York, among many others”, reads the decree.
The process began in May 2020, following a public call for the urgent classification of the more than 150-year-old archive.
In the summer of that year, the General Directorate of Books, Archives and Libraries (DGLAB), headed by Silvestre Lacerda, announced the opening of the procedure to classify the DN archive as an archival and photographic asset of national interest.
Silvestre Lacerda’s proposal was that it be classified as of national interest -equivalent to a national treasure-, “the highest designation for the protection of archival and photographic assets” existing in the law of classification of heritage assets, according to what he told Lusa in time. .
The classification process encompasses millions of newspapers and microfilmed photographs from an archive created from the founding of Diário de Notícias, in 1864, until 2003, when it became extinct due to a merger with Global Notícias SA.
Asked by Lusa in 2020 about the status of the archive and the risks it was running, Silvestre Lacerda said that the technicians who followed the process “warn about certain conservation areas, but there were improvements after the visits.”
There are some risks, of an eventual dispersion” of the file, said the official.
Since the opening of the process, the file is automatically protected by law, and may not leave the country, and any change in its conditions must be communicated to the DGLAB, also in accordance with legal requirements.
The order of protection issued in May 2020 was signed by personalities such as the historians Fernando Rosas, Pacheco Pereira and Irene Pimentel, the former presidents of the Republic António Ramalho Eanes and Jorge Sampaio, the writers Francisco José Viegas and José Luís Peixoto and the journalists Adelino Gomes, Diana Andringa and José Pedro Castanheira.
Source: Observadora
