A minute book It is a notebook where the scribes used to keep pages or documents that were given to them or that were later signed by different parties. It is a book or notebook where the generalities of a case or contract between two or more people are recorded, short, without the details that characterize them and that will later be completed by the notary public.
The Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy defines a minute book as a masculine noun used to call the notebook in which a notary or notary public placed drafts or minutes of the documents or public deeds that were delivered to him..
Its use does not have a specific start date, but it dates back many years. As if to get an idea, he entered the dictionary of the RAE in 1884. Today this term is not so usual, nor is its use within the world of writing, although it is not extinct.
The minute book was added as a tool of the notaries by necessity, since many times the work had to be done outside of their work address and the writing of a full legal text was not finished..
That is why in cases such as wills, greater precautions were taken in the drafting of exact preliminary texts, more careful and protected by law..
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To find the real meaning of the word minute, we have to say that it contains minutes. A minute is a word that comes from Latin and means "draft." That is to say that a minute is a writing that precedes a definitive one.
So a minute book is a draft notebook, where the texts are filed that will later be part of a longer contract, but which generally has the approval of the parties..
It is a simple paper booklet where the clerk puts the minutes or drafts of the deeds that are given to him. The parties who present them, manifest the agreement they have made and the notary public by himself or through a clerk (a copyist), writes it down or notes it in the minute book where the parties will then sign.
It is so called because in it things or generalities are noted without the extension or explanation with which they are written later as the protocol says. In addition, since the minutes are made with the interested parties present and in the terms that they suggest, it seems natural that the minutes make the protocol more credible in case of observing any disagreement between the two.
Now, what happened in the event that a clerk died before recording a minute record? These cases, although rarely, happened and it was the interested party who could ask the judge to take the document as valid and be sent to legalize with due process..
In law the term is still used, although for descriptions in general. One case where it is cited is in a legal appeal that one person filed against another in Mexico before the Attorney General's Office:
"I request that you request information from Eng. Néstor Palomares, Computer Science Director of the now General Prosecutor's Office, to send that prosecutor a certified copy of the file, booklet, official letter and superior order, or minute where it is contained the administrative process that was used and ordered (…) "
Although we clarify that it was used mainly by notaries or notaries, the word minute for many became synonymous with annotator or diary.
For example, in an article on the literary site "Letras Libres", the author refers to a diary of the Italian writer Carlo Coccioli in this way: "This North American period gave birth to that diary or rather" minute "today almost cult: Piccolo karma.
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