Beyond Theory – Interview with Virginia Bazán-Gil by Juan Alonso

With more than 20 years of experience in one of the most important television archives in Europe, could you briefly introduce the RTVE Archive? What is its mission, how did it originate, and what materials does it preserve? What key figures stand out in its historical trajectory? Why would you consider it central to national and international audiovisual memory? And finally, how is the team that manages it structured?

The mission of the RTVE Archive is to preserve and facilitate access to the audiovisual and sound production of Radio Televisión Española, ensuring that this heritage is available for broadcasting, the creation of new content, research, dissemination, and the country’s collective memory.

Our vision is that of a modern, digital, and connected archive: a living space that preserves the past while supporting the present, guaranteeing access to audiovisual heritage as a public service and actively contributing to audiovisual production and culture.

The RTVE Archive holds 24 million documents across different media and formats. It is essentially made up of the collections of Televisión Española (TVE) and Radio Nacional de España (RNE).

In the television domain, the oldest recordings preserved date back to the late 1950s, and from 1962 onwards the regular preservation of in-house production began. From the 1980s, this process became systematic, making it possible to gather 3,975,000 documents and more than 1,450,000 hours of content. The TVE collections include news, cultural, educational, and entertainment programmes, as well as special coverage and historic broadcasts documenting the country’s main social, political, and cultural events, including productions from regional centres and correspondents.

As for radio, the RNE collection reflects the technological evolution of the medium and of sound production and preservation systems. The introduction of IT systems in the Archive in the 1980s and the subsequent digitisation of production and broadcasting in the 1990s made it possible to preserve broadcasts in their entirety. Today, the RNE holdings comprise 2,950,000 documents and around 1,500,000 hours.

The RTVE Archive also preserves an outstanding photographic collection of more than 800,000 images, with holdings dating back to the early twentieth century. These photographs document the history of public broadcasting and the country’s social, cultural, and technological evolution, and include singular collections such as those of Christian Franzen, Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, and the historic magazine Teleradio.

The RTVE Archive is key to understanding the history of Spain, not only because of its volume and broad chronological coverage, but also because for decades it was the only audiovisual witness with a nationwide network of regional centres and correspondents. This situation remained until the arrival of private television in 1990, although the first regional broadcasters began operating in 1983.

The Archive is managed by a team of nearly 220 professionals with diverse and highly specialised profiles. The staff combines archivists, technical personnel, and management professionals, who work in a coordinated manner at the Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia sites. Their work ensures the preservation, access, and proper documentary processing of audiovisual heritage, providing rigour, continuity, and quality to the service offered by RTVE.

What was the RTVE Archive like when you joined in 2004, and what have been the main changes since then?

Preserving the RTVE Archive has been a complex and continuous task. Over the decades, the Corporation has carried out an ongoing process of migration and digitisation to ensure the long-term preservation of its content and its accessibility for production and for society.

When I joined RTVE as a documentalista in 2004, a major project was beginning to migrate analogue formats—1-inch, 2-inch, and U-Matic—with the aim of preserving content and facilitating its use in production. This process, which concluded in 2008, marked the beginning of a profound transformation of the Archive. In parallel, in 2007 the digitisation of news production began, although it was not until 2009 that the first transfers of this content to the digital archive took place, consolidating a more efficient information management system.

The year 2010 marked a turning point with the implementation of a Media Asset Management (MAM) system in three strategic areas: News, Programmes, and the Sant Cugat production centre in Barcelona. This advance was accompanied by the deployment of a custom-developed multimedia document management system designed to manage both audiovisual content and associated metadata. That same year, large-scale digitisation of the Archive began, combining internal and external resources.

In 2011, the digital newsroom was implemented in the News area, and later, in 2013, in non-news programming at Prado del Rey. In 2014, connections were established between the digital archive and production systems, strengthening the Archive’s integration into workflows. Later, in 2017, content stored on LTO5 media was migrated to LTO7, improving storage capacity, security, and sustainability. In 2020, the MAM system was updated, the News and Programmes libraries were unified, and a new version of the document management system was implemented.

Another significant milestone occurred in 2021 with the incorporation of artificial intelligence solutions into the Archive’s daily work – an area in which RTVE has been a pioneer and which continues to be developed in both sound and audiovisual archives. In 2026, work will begin on the comprehensive renewal of digital storage and the updating of technical equipment, including the replacement of telecines with state-of-the-art scanners.

Undoubtedly, the main changes experienced by the Archive over the past 20 years have been linked to technological evolution, driven by new demands in audiovisual production and by the progressive professionalisation of teams. Above all, however, these two decades have consolidated the value of the Archive as a strategic element for the RTVE Corporation.

On your LinkedIn profile you describe your work as “preserving the past and building the future of audiovisual archives.” Archives – especially historical ones – are often seen as spaces of heritage preservation, while television archives are perceived as being more oriented towards immediate reuse in production. Do you share this view? How does the RTVE Archive reconcile these two dimensions: service to current production and long-term preservation?

At the RTVE Archive, two dimensions that are often presented as opposites coexist inseparably: heritage preservation and direct service to audiovisual production. It is a historical archive, but also a strategic resource for a modern media organisation such as RTVE. The Archive is no longer merely a space associated with memory or nostalgia; it has become a key asset for the Corporation. Alongside its heritage value, it plays a relevant role in content reuse, the sale of footage and programmes for different distribution channels, and more recently, in agreements linked to algorithm training.

From this perspective, the RTVE Archive is structured around two clearly defined and complementary axes. On the one hand, its heritage dimension, focused on the recovery and preservation of images and sounds from analogue media – magnetic tapes and film materials – that document, in a particularly significant way, the second half of the twentieth century. On the other, its production-oriented function, centred on the continuous incorporation of contemporary digital content generated within current audiovisual workflows.

Managing these two dimensions in a balanced way – the heritage dimension linked to the past and the production-oriented dimension focused on the present – is not always easy, especially when resources are primarily allocated to meet the immediate needs of production. Even so, over the past two years RTVE has made decisive progress in improving access to the Archive for both researchers and the general public.

For the public at large, this access is articulated through high-value curatorial collections, as demonstrated on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the dictator Franco. In that context, various collections were selected and contextualised, including one focused on Spanish society at the time. In the field of research, we facilitate access to the holdings both remotely and on-site at our headquarters in Madrid. At the same time, we are working to establish partnerships with other institutions that allow us to advance both knowledge of the collections and their accessibility, contributing to a broader and more plural understanding of the past.

In the audiovisual field, there is still no clear consensus on the most appropriate formats and codecs for long-term preservation, especially in the case of digital video. How does RTVE address this issue, and what is your view on the challenges of preserving born-digital video?

Media archives are closely linked to production processes and therefore depend heavily on technological transformations within the audiovisual industry. In this context, decisions regarding formats and codecs are often driven by the immediate needs of production and broadcasting, and do not always incorporate sufficient reflection on medium- and long-term preservation from the outset. Recent technological shifts, such as the implementation of UHD broadcasting, have once again highlighted this tension.

For this reason, we consider it essential for the Archive to be integrated into the working groups where technological transformation strategies are defined. Only through early involvement is it possible to anticipate the impact that these decisions will have on future preservation, particularly in the case of video that is born entirely within digital environments.

Given the lack of a clear and stable consensus in the audiovisual field regarding preservation formats and codecs, active participation in international professional networks is equally fundamental. In this regard, FIAT/IFTA – and in particular its Preservation and Migration Commission – has been working on these issues for years from multiple perspectives, generating spaces for debate, seminars, and reference documents that help guide decision-making in a context of constant technological change.

At RTVE, production and the Archive are closely interconnected. We have teams working within production archives and others specifically oriented towards long-term preservation. In television production, these workflows are well defined and consolidated. However, the preservation of radio content – where editing is much faster than in television- and productions conceived exclusively for digital channels still pose significant challenges, largely due to the lack of integration between these ecosystems and traditional archival systems.

In this context, the preservation of born-digital video cannot be addressed solely as a technical issue, but rather as an ongoing process that must be integrated from the very design of production workflows.

One of the major challenges for audiovisual archives is the sheer volume of material they generate and manage, which makes it impossible to preserve everything. How does RTVE approach retention and appraisal of audiovisual material? Are there defined and published criteria for this process?

Broadcast media archives are defined both by what they have managed to preserve and by what, for technical, economic, or historical reasons, could not be retained. In the early years of radio and television, broadcasting was essentially live, and recording was either limited or economically unfeasible. The idea of preserving recordings long-term for their historical and heritage value developed progressively.

In the case of RNE, before the introduction of magnetic tape, recordings were made on acetate discs with a limited lifespan, whose transfer to more durable formats involved considerable cost. With the introduction of tape, these were so expensive that only a very limited number were available, almost exclusively for broadcasting. A similar situation occurred at TVE: the introduction of video recording came with equally costly equipment and media, which for many years encouraged tape reuse rather than preservation. In the analogue environment, it was realistically assumed that it was not possible to preserve everything.

The selection of material for permanent preservation was therefore highly selective, based on criteria such as informational value, potential for reuse at the time, processing costs, available storage space, availability of recordings, and assessments made during production. In the digital environment, perceptions have changed: storage capacity appears almost unlimited, and each technological leap multiplies available space.

This new digital context, however, has also introduced certain risks. Archivists live with the constant fear of having deleted a document that may prove indispensable in the future, which sometimes leads to a tendency to keep everything. This “digital hoarding syndrome” makes ongoing reflection on retention and appraisal even more necessary, to prevent apparent abundance from replacing archival criteria.

At RTVE, in addition to the permanent archive, there are production archives in which content remains for three to four years, until the passage of time allows for a more informed decision on whether it should be preserved permanently. This process is carried out by different but coordinated teams in Madrid, Barcelona, and the regional centres. This coordination has helped rationalise preservation, as historically geographic dispersion and the division between news and programmes generated significant duplication of material. Over the past year, major progress has been made thanks to improved coordination between teams, contributing to more efficient and coherent management of the collections.

This applies to current digital production. However, if we broaden our perspective to holdings from past decades that we are only now digitising, the issue becomes even more complex. What criteria should we apply today to evaluate materials that survived non-systematic appraisal processes? Are we fully aware that many documents were preserved not because they were identified as valuable, but precisely because there was neither the time nor the resources to analyse and discard them? In many cases, these materials now constitute the only remaining traces of content that once had significant informational, cultural, or social value.

At RTVE, we have experienced this situation very concretely in historically significant series whose production relied heavily on images from other institutions. This experience requires us to rethink the appraisal of uncatalogued holdings from a historical and heritage perspective, and to accept that selection criteria cannot be static, but must be revisited in light of time, context, and new potential uses of archives.

In this sense, although there are consolidated criteria and conventions – such as preserving the legal broadcast copy, prioritising in-house production, and retaining content with future reuse potential- archival appraisal remains a dynamic process, shaped by technological evolution and by the changing needs of society.

The Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA) in France is a reference point in audiovisual management and has a business model in which archive commercialisation and training activities represent a significant part of its income. What is your view of this model? Do you think audiovisual archives have strong potential to generate economic resources? Is anything similar applied at RTVE?

The Institut National de l’Audiovisuel is undoubtedly an international benchmark and benefits from being an institution whose core activity is focused exclusively on archives. Its primary mission is the preservation, access, and management of French audiovisual heritage, together with a strong commitment to professional training and the dissemination of knowledge at an international level. Its entire model is coherently structured around these objectives, to which it dedicates its resources and strategy.

Media archives, even in the public sector and with a clear heritage value, operate in a different context, closely linked to daily production and to the dynamics of audiovisual organisations.

Within this framework, audiovisual archives have significant potential to generate economic resources and added value. At RTVE, the Archive constitutes a relevant source of income for the Corporation. In 2024, RTVE generated 2,175,000€ from the sale of footage and 11,400,000€ from the commercialisation of archive programmes, in addition to its contribution to content co-productions through the use of archival material. Moreover, the systematic reuse of archival holdings enables the development of new high-quality content, optimising available resources and reinforcing the sustainability of audiovisual production.

In a context in which the value of public media is often questioned and in which the social return of archives is not always considered sufficient, the ability to also demonstrate their economic return takes on particular importance. In this sense, evidencing the return on investment in digital preservation can be a key argument for ensuring the sustainability and future of media archives.

Beyond commercialisation understood in purely economic terms, some authors propose thinking about the use value of audiovisual archives, not only their exchange value. What is your opinion of this perspective?

Undoubtedly, the economic value of audiovisual archives does not fully reflect the true return on investment. Media archives also have a fundamental social value. They are an essential part of collective memory, as it is through the media that societies inform themselves, represent themselves, and reflect on themselves on a daily basis.

The value of an archive can be analysed from different perspectives. On the one hand, one can consider the costs associated with its maintenance, such as investment in digitisation, the risks derived from heritage loss, or the income that would be lost in terms of reuse and commercialisation. From another perspective, the archive can be valued in market terms, through the direct sale of footage or complete programmes, while also considering its contribution to in-house production and co-productions, as well as the use of data for algorithm training.

Alongside these approaches, there is a broader vision that understands the archive as a strategic asset within the media and entertainment ecosystem. In this sense, FIAT/IFTA actively promotes debate around the economic value of archives, based on the idea that an archive capable of generating revenue can strengthen its position within the organisation and its influence in decision-making processes.

This debate is not limited to economic value. FIAT/IFTA also promotes a broader reflection on the use value of archives through various commissions, such as the Value, Use and Copyright Commission and the Media Studies Commission, from which highly relevant initiatives and discussions have emerged in recent years.

How is artificial intelligence being applied at the RTVE Archive? Based on your experience, what are the main strengths and limitations of this technology in the field of audiovisual archives?

Since 2021, the RTVE Archive has integrated artificial intelligence into its daily workflows, primarily for the metadata creation of television content and subsequently also for radio.

The application of AI has made a much larger volume of content accessible. Beyond its usefulness in daily production, its impact has been particularly significant in providing access to historical collections. The development of facial recognition models for protagonists from specific historical periods is a notable example, as newer generations of documentalists do not always have direct references to those contexts. Likewise, the possibilities offered by generative AI are especially valuable in a multilingual reality such as Spain, with an archive in Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Valencian, and Basque.

The highest level of maturity has undoubtedly been reached in audio-related applications, where results are already very robust. In the field of image analysis, by contrast, technologies such as automatic scene description in natural language or object recognition still show clear margins for improvement in practical application. At RTVE, our approach is to continue advancing in this area through concrete use cases, such as news programmes, which allow for a precise evaluation of the added value of these tools.

Throughout this process, it is essential to underline the central role of people. Artificial intelligence must be understood as a technology at the service of the Archive, integrated into workflows and supervised by specialised professionals. In parallel, RTVE continues to work together with the RTVE–University of Zaragoza Chair on future developments related to AI. Nevertheless, its medium- and long-term impact remains partly uncertain, and it is necessary to further examine how metadata generated through these technologies may affect an archival ecosystem traditionally based on highly reliable data.

Since 2017 you have been actively involved in FIAT/IFTA and other international organisations in the audiovisual field. What insights and perspectives has this experience brought to your work in archive management? How important, in your view, is international collaboration in this field?

My involvement in FIAT/IFTA since 2017, together with collaboration with other international organisations in the audiovisual field, has been key to my professional development and to my understanding of archive management. I particularly remember my first experience with the Federation at the conference held in Warsaw in 2016. I was deeply impressed by the level of the projects presented. That first conference was an opportunity to learn, grow, and find inspiration. I returned with many new ideas and some personal contacts that have endured over time.

A year later, with greater professional involvement and the backing of RTVE, I felt a responsibility to contribute actively to this exchange of knowledge. Presenting our work and engaging in direct dialogue with colleagues from international institutions marked a turning point. A dialogue opened up based on the exchange of experiences, advice, and mutual support, and it was then that I understood FIAT/IFTA not merely as a professional network, but as a true community of thought.

Over the years, I have had the opportunity to meet extraordinary colleagues who have had a decisive influence on my professional growth. With them, I have shared concerns, challenges, and a clear commitment to modernising the RTVE Archive. I have learned the importance of surrounding oneself with people from whom one can always learn something new – a network that drives, motivates, and enriches.

International collaboration is essential in our field, but ultimately it is built through collaboration between individuals. That is why I can state with pride that the audiovisual and sound archives community is open, committed, and genuinely collaborative – something that can only be fully understood from within.

At the most recent FIAT/IFTA World Conference in Rome, the slogan was “Everything is possible and nothing is true?”, highlighting a context marked by the rise of generative artificial intelligence and the proliferation of disinformation. What opportunities and risks does this scenario pose for the profession and for the public’s relationship with audiovisual archives?

The scenario described by the slogan “Everything is possible and nothing is true?” reflects a central tension for audiovisual archives in the era of generative artificial intelligence. On the one hand, significant opportunities emerge. AI makes it possible to improve the preservation, documentation, and accessibility of archives, accelerate academic research, and offer new ways of contextualising the past. Public media archives, due to their volume, quality, and diversity, are also a key resource in combating disinformation, as they constitute verifiable testimonies of what happened and of how societies have represented themselves over time.

At the same time, this context poses significant risks. The proliferation of synthetic content and the use of protected material to train AI models may erode public trust if clear frameworks of transparency, traceability, and ethical use are not established. For archive professionals, the challenge is twofold: to protect the social, cultural, and democratic value of these collections— which goes beyond their economic value— and to prevent existing biases from being amplified through technology.

In this sense, audiovisual archives are a pillar of collective memory and social identity. Their responsible management, supported by AI but guided by public service principles, is essential to strengthening the relationship of trust with the public and ensuring that, in an environment of informational uncertainty, it remains possible to distinguish between what is documented and what is artificially generated.

You have recently completed a doctoral thesis, something that seems relatively uncommon among archivists and documentalists. In such a rapidly changing technological environment as audiovisual archiving, do you think it is important to generate and publish knowledge in this format? At what point in one’s career do you consider it most appropriate to undertake doctoral research, and which lines of research do you believe have the greatest potential in the field of audiovisual archives?

Since graduating in Information and Documentation, I have maintained a constant connection with the university. For a decade, I was an associate professor at the Universidad Carlos III of Madrid, and more recently the RTVE-University of Zaragoza Chair has allowed me to continue collaborating with leading researchers and academics. In this context, taking a further step and publishing the knowledge generated, systematising it, and ultimately compiling it in a doctoral thesis was a natural evolution of work that had already been developed within the professional sphere.

Defending a doctoral thesis had always been part of my life plans, and in July 2025 I was able to do so while also contributing in Spanish to a field such as artificial intelligence, in which the RTVE Archive has been a pioneer. Initiating this process is, in any case, a very personal decision. In my case, I did so at a time of great professional demand – as Director of the Archive and President of FIAT/IFTA – and also personal challenge. It was probably not the most comfortable moment in life, but it was an especially appropriate one due to the experience and knowledge accumulated after more than 20 years working in the sector.

I believe the field of audiovisual archives has enormous research potential. When embarking on a literature review for an academic project or to launch a new initiative, the scarcity of references quickly becomes evident, partly because this is highly specialised knowledge, closely linked to professional practice and often excluded from traditional academic channels. Added to this is a growing crisis of confidence in the scientific publishing system, which forces us to rethink how knowledge is generated, validated, and disseminated.

In this context, I consider it essential not only to conduct research, but also to publish and share that knowledge in accessible, rigorous, and useful formats for the professional community, and to do so in languages other than English. At FIAT/IFTA, we assume precisely this “editorial” role: facilitating the publication of expert work, making applied knowledge visible, and building bridges between professional practice and research.

In a European context marked by the war in Ukraine and by new threats, some archives have begun to implement emergency programmes linked to armed conflict, identifying vital records to ensure their rapid rescue or evacuation. Is RTVE considering similar business continuity plans? What strategies do you believe would be most appropriate in the event of an extreme crisis situation?

This is undoubtedly an issue of particular relevance looking ahead to 2026. At present, the RTVE Archive has digital preservation measures in place, and over the course of this year we will begin a process of reflection linked to the renewal of technological infrastructure and digital management systems. This will be the appropriate moment to more systematically incorporate emergency and business continuity scenarios.

Recent experiences have highlighted both the fragility and the essential value of archives. The DANA storm that affected several regions of Spain in October 2024, and especially Valencia, demonstrated the extent to which archives are fundamental to the reconstruction of collective memory, accountability, and the exercise of rights. In this context, the technological renewal we must undertake represents a clear opportunity to strengthen our long-term preservation approach and to move towards more specific response plans for extreme crisis situations.

From a content perspective, and in those areas where we have greater autonomy, any emergency strategy should include the identification and preservation of an essential part of our sound and audiovisual memory. The selection, prioritisation, and proper contextualisation of these materials, however, raise complex methodological and ethical challenges that require reflection and consensus.

From the perspective of FIAT/IFTA, emergency management and the protection of audiovisual archives in risk contexts is a clearly international debate. The experience accumulated in regions such as Latin America and the Caribbean, where preservation strategies have been developed in contexts of conflict, natural disasters, or high vulnerability, offers valuable references for reflecting on preparedness models, identification of essential content, and responses to critical scenarios. It is no coincidence that this is one of the issues expected to feature prominently at the FIAT/IFTA World Conference in 2026, as well as in regional seminars conceived as spaces for exchange and learning among professionals.

You balance a wide range of demanding responsibilities: directing the RTVE Archives, presiding over FIAT/IFTA, teaching, research, and participation in international forums. How do you manage your time and organise your work to cover all these activities? And looking ahead, what projects or lines of work would you like to promote?

It is true that the past two years have been particularly demanding. Balancing such diverse responsibilities is only possible with the unconditional support of my family and the backing of a highly professional and committed team at RTVE.

In terms of work organisation, it is essential to rely on strong teams, delegate and prioritise, and maintain a clear vision of strategic objectives. This makes it possible to combine day-to-day management with participation in international forums, teaching, and research, without losing sight of long-term impact.

Looking ahead, at RTVE I would like to continue fostering a genuine Archive culture, in which everyone feels part of a shared project, one capable of attracting the best talent and developing relevant initiatives beyond everyday tasks.

In the case of FIAT/IFTA, the Executive Committee is made up of directors and senior managers who, through commissions and also from regional perspectives, are actively involved in large-scale projects. I am also fortunate to collaborate with people with an extraordinary strategic and international vision, such as Delphine Wibaux, Karin van Arkel, and Brecht Declercq. For the Federation, the goal is to move towards an increasingly inclusive organisation, sensitive to regional and cultural diversity, and functioning as a useful and approachable instrument at the service of its members.

Finally, based on your experience as a documentalist, researcher, and teacher, what recommendations would you give to young researchers or students interested in pursuing a career in the field of audiovisual archiving? What skills do you believe will be most in demand in the future?

Access to the labour market in the cultural and knowledge sectors is likely to become increasingly complex for new generations. In the field of audiovisual archives, specialised training that combines a solid humanistic foundation with technological skills is, in my view, essential. The evolution of digital tools and artificial intelligence requires profiles capable of understanding both the cultural and social value of archives and the technological environments in which they are managed.

That said, I believe what truly distinguishes good professionals are qualities that may seem simple but are decisive: genuine interest in the work, the ability to engage fully, and generosity in collaborating and sharing knowledge. In a sector that is so specialised and constantly evolving, these attitudes are just as important as technical skills and, in my experience, are what make it possible to drive meaningful change. I firmly believe in the value of people and in their capacity to positively transform the ecosystem in which they work.

Virginia Bazán-Gil is Director of Archives at RTVE and President of FIAT/IFTA. She is also a member of the RTVE–University of Zaragoza Chair, where she works on the application of artificial intelligence to audiovisual archives. She serves on the Advisory Board of the ASBU Academy, the FRAME programme at INA, and the Polish Film Archive. Her teaching experience includes academic and professional training for various companies and public institutions, and she has been an Associate Professor at Universidad Carlos III of Madrid. She is currently Co-Director of the Master’s Degree in Management and Use of Audiovisual Heritage at Universidad Carlos III of Madrid and the RTVE Institute.