Journal's history

Although the publishing body of the Boletín was created in 1849 as “Comisión para formar la carta geológica del terreno de Madrid, y reunir y coordinar los datos para la general del reino” (Commission to form the geological map of Madrid, and to gather and coordinate the data for the general map of the kingdom), it was not until 1874 when, after being renamed "Comisión del Mapa Geológico de España" (Commission of the Geological Map of Spain), the publication of this journal began. In fact, the publication of the “Boletín de la Comisión del Mapa Geológico de España” (Geological Map of Spain’s Comission Bulletin) was authorized by order of the Dirección General de Obras Públicas, Agricultura, Industria y Comercio (General Directorate for Public Works, Agriculture, Industry and Commerce), dated June 30, 1873, in which it was established that the Director of the Commission could publish reports, maps, descriptions and news in periodical notebooks, in a similar way to the bulletins and reports of the Geological Societies of London and France. Thus, volume I of the first series was published the following year (1874), being the Director of the Geological Map Commission the prestigious engineer Manuel Fernández de Castro; it was printed in the Printing and Foundry of Manuel Tello, located at 23 Isabel la Católica Street (Madrid). In the prologue of this volume I it is already indicated that the purpose of this publication is to make known to the public the works carried out by the Commission, such as the provincial geological sketches, which are mostly deposited in the archives; "so that men of science and industrialists could take advantage of the data contained in these valuable documents..... There will hardly be a mining engineer, geology professor or naturalist, who does not possess a wealth of observations that would quickly give shape, with obvious usefulness to science, if they were provided with the means to publish them as they were made".

In addition, there was a detailed list of the documents that will be included in these publications, with 16 headings, including: maps, regional surveys, descriptions of fossils, catalogs of rocks and minerals, studies of breeding grounds, applications to agriculture, construction and industry, studies of springs and subway water sources, catalogs of prehistoric objects, news of earthquakes, floods, aerolites and other geological phenomena, translations of foreign works, extracts of new discoveries, bibliographical news, fragments of old works, official documents, and as many works on geology as are worthy of seeing the public light. This first series was published regularly, one volume per year, from 1874 (volume I) to 1893 (volume XX).

The year 1896 saw the publication of the first volume (corresponding to 1894) of the second series of the Boletín, which was to continue irregularly until the end of the 19th century. With this second series, the Boletín introduced bibliographical reviews at the end of each volume, and the indexes of titles, subjects and authors in alphabetical order, in imitation of the publications of the Royal Academy of Sciences in London. Volumes XXI (1894), XXII (1895), XXIII (1896), XXII and XXIV (1897), XXV (1898), XXVI (1899) and XXVII (1900) were published. Then for five years no volume was published (1901-1905) and, under the direction of Daniel de Cortázar from 1902, volumes XXVIII (1906), XXIX (1908) and XXX (1909) were published again, leaving 1907 blank.

From the volume corresponding to 1910, with the change of name of the publishing body, the journal also changed its name to “Boletín del Instituto Geológico de España”. Under this name it was published regularly between 1910 and 1919 (volumes XXXI to XL) under the direction of Luis de Adaro; the printing house was changed from the “Viuda e Hijos de M. Tello” to the “Imprenta de Antonio Marzo”. From 1920 (volume XLI) the third series began, printed by “Gráficas Reunidas” and directed by Rafael Sánchez Lozano, which only reached 1926 (volumes XLVI, XLVII and XLVIII), with the parenthesis of 1925 (without a published volume).

A new change in the name of the publishing body changed its name to “Boletín del Instituto Geológico y Minero de España” in 1927 (volume XLIX), under the direction of Luis de la Peña, and it was published irregularly throughout the following decade: L (1928), LI (1929), LII (1930) and LIII (1933); no volumes were published the rest of the years. During the Spanish Civil War only one volume was published (LIV, 1937) and the publication was not resumed until 1941 (volume LV), under the direction of Agustín Marín y Beltrán de Lis, on the first page of which appears a photo of Francisco Franco visiting the IGME, and whose prologue begins with the sentence: "After the Liberation of Spain carried out by our Glorious Caudillo, the Geological Institute, after having lived through the tragedy that preceded it, in the peace of these last two years, has proceeded to its material and spiritual reconstruction. As a result of this work, we have resumed our publications...". The Boletín continued to be published irregularly over the next quarter of a century, with no volumes being published in 1942, 1943, 1947, 1950 and 1955, and two volumes being published in 1944 (LVII 1 and 2), 1948 (LX and LXI) and 1967 (LXXVIII and fascicle 5 of volume LXXIX).

It was precisely from the fifth issue of volume LXXIX (November-December 1967), when J.M. López de Azcona was Editor-in-Chief, that the journal adopted its current name: “Boletín Geológico y Minero”. With the publication of the remaining issues (1, 2, 3, 4 and 6) of volume LXXIX in 1968, the fourth series of the Boletín began, and the issues were published every two months (six per year and volume). The Editorial Committee, made up of 25 prestigious scientists and technicians (20 of them from organisations outside the IGME), included illustrious names in Spanish geology and mining, such as Crusafont, Fúster, Hernández-Pacheco, Meléndez, Mingarro, Parga, Riba, Ríos, Solé and Virgili, among others. It continued to be published with great regularity until 1988 (volume XCIX), adopting its characteristic covers in a succession of different colours (orange, green, blue, yellow, sky blue, brown, and orange again) with table of contents, masthead and photo. Volume 100 (1989) marked the beginning of the fifth series, the one we are currently in, with a change in the design and colour of the front cover to the current silver-grey. And so it continued to be published regularly until 2001 (volume 112), when it changed from bimonthly to the current quarterly periodicity (four issues per year), although with monographs and special issues that were not numbered. With the arrival of the previous main editor, Juan José Durán, in 2001, the Boletín was modernised and renewed, introducing the standards of any internationally recognised scientific journal into the editorial process. These last two decades of the Boletín have been magnificently analysed from a formal, content and dissemination point of view, in two studies carried out by J.M. Baltuille and by a team coordinated by O. Bermúdez, to which we refer the interested reader.

This trajectory can be followed thanks to the magnificent work of compilation and scanning carried out some years ago by the IGME Library, which makes all the volumes between 1874 and 1999 available on the Internet on the Library's website; in addition to the complete texts between 2000 and 2008, and a consultation application, available on the Publications Service website; both are accessible through the Bulletin's website (https://www.igme.es/boletin).

Translated from the original by Andrés Díez-Herrero