Sebastián Jiménez Sánchez

Sebastián Jiménez Sánchez was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 1904. He died in the same city in 1983. A teacher and researcher of archaeology, history and folklore, he worked extensively with El Museo Canario and the administration of excavations in Las Palmas province. His legacy includes publications and a substantial archive of plans, photographs, diaries and correspondence. Understanding that legacy also requires attention to his involvement in the institutions and cultural policy of the Franco dictatorship.

He trained as a teacher in his native city and taught for sixteen years at the Las Palmas teacher training school, where his subjects were Geography and Natural Sciences. He did not enter archaeology through professional archaeological training, but through teaching and local research. He also worked as a civil servant for the Administrative Board of Public Works. He had joined it before the Spanish Civil War and retired in 1974, combining that employment with his cultural responsibilities.

He served as secretary of El Museo Canario from 1936 to 1939 and as treasurer from 1943 to 1945. From 1941 until 1969 he was provincial commissioner for archaeological excavations, with responsibility for Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and Fuerteventura. These positions were unpaid. Correspondence with Julio Martínez Santa-Olalla reveals his difficulties in preparing reports while attending to his regular employment and lacking paid assistants. The commissioner system shaped both administrative organisation and the resources available for archaeological investigation in the province.

His public career involved explicit participation in Francoist institutions. He belonged to Falange and headed Censorship and Publications for FET y de las JONS. He was also provincial delegate for Popular Education and a regional trustee of the Museo del Pueblo Español. He founded and directed Faycan, a magazine published between 1952 and 1961. In 1955 he became a corresponding member of the Real Academia de la Historia. These responsibilities place his research within the cultural and political networks of the regime.

He wrote about indigenous burial and embalming practices, while also addressing history, art, traditions and religious history. The museum's announcement of his archive donation counted approximately thirty published books and booklets, alongside unpublished manuscripts. After his death, his children Concepción, María del Carmen and Sebastián donated the material to El Museo Canario. Its archaeological component comprised 210 folders and files containing plans, sketches, excavation diaries, photographs and letters. Other sections documented festivals, traditional housing, vocabulary, place names and religious subjects.

His photographs preserve evidence of monuments that had already disappeared when the archive was described. This documentary value needs to be distinguished from his interpretations of indigenous settlement. A. José Farrujia de la Rosa's study examines his research in relation to diffusionism, racial classifications and the Africanist orientation of Francoist archaeology. His contribution to documentation remains important to historical enquiry, while those explanatory models belong to the history of the discipline. They are not presented here as scientific conclusions accepted today.