Ronda houses, in its Royal Maestranza de Caballera, the most important genealogical repertoire in the Hispanic world. With more than a million records and evidence on lineages, and in the process of digitization, it is living proof of the value of the family name as a historical treasure.
In the center of the town is the headquarters of its Royal Cavalry Mastery, with a discreet arrogance that now defies time and even its legacies from 450 years ago. How is an institution whose origins are military, noble, based on the defense of territories and privileges, or later focused on bullfighting, able to survive planted there? Is there anything more anachronistic in this century? No. But perhaps precisely for that reason, to take clever advantage of its paradoxes, with its members and leaders very aware of its extemporaneous, although indisputably secular, singularity, it resists in the 21st century. The last names, to start. Genealogy, a science in full development that is experiencing new times thanks to the technological revolution. Ancestry.com was founded in 1990 by two young men from Utah, Paul Brent Allen and Dan Taggart. Thirty years later, in 2020, the Blackstone group bought it for $4.7 billion. "In America, genealogy is a very important science," says Rafael Atienza, eldest brother lieutenant of the Real Maestranza. The distance discouraged the effort to delve into those origins. Today it is possible, cheap and fast, as a result of the success of internet sites and companies like Ancestry.com. 'It is trading very high on the stock market,' says Atienza. 'It is a model for many similar portals. It reflects the vision of its creators and how they knew how to anticipate the future in the field of technology.' We offer in our archives for Spain and Latin America the most reliable information in that first field that can be found,' he says, adding that they, with their own data and more intimate way, claim to want to contribute.