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Getting involved with cultural heritage

14/04/2021

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Diario de Navarra

Ricardo Fernández Gracia

Director of the Chair of Navarrese Heritage and Art

It is not advisable to take texts out of context, since they become pretexts. But I will start from a suggestive degree scroll that I. Gabilondo used in one of his journalistic collaborations: "A society without common ground is a society without common sense". It comes as a ring to my finger to reflect on cultural heritage as a sign of common identity and an element of cohesion and vertebration of our peoples.

Recently, 2018 was declared the European Year of Cultural Heritage, with the goal to encourage discovery and engagement with the rich heritage received, reinforcing the feeling of belonging to a common space. The motto adopted was "Our heritage: where the past meets the future".

Heritage, tradition and identity are three concepts that are related but have their own scope. By tradition we mean what has been transmitted to us from the past, although it must be taken into account that it is not immobile and unalterable, but dynamic, changing and adaptive. Heritage, tangible and intangible, constitutes the expression of the culture of a human group and establishes a link between generations. Identity refers to tradition and heritage, always bearing in mind that the human being is gregarious and seeks coincidences, in order to feel like a member of a collective, developing a sense of belonging.

The identity of our people linked to their heritage

The cultural identity of a people is defined through multiple aspects in which its culture is embodied, such as the historical-artistic bequest , the language, social relations, rites, ceremonies, collective behaviors and other immaterial elements. Monuments and objects are specifically effective as condensers of values. By their material and singular presence, as concrete cultural goods, they possess a high symbolic meaning, which assume and summary the essential character of their historical context. Cultural goods help to deepen in the history of the peoples and outline their own identity, staff and collective.

The concept and idea of heritage took shape in the 19th century, after the experiences of destruction caused by wars and revolutions, which made many traces of an abhorred past disappear. A circular of the French National Convention of 1794, after the multiple destructions, recalled: "You are only the depositaries of the property donated to the great family, which has the right to call you to account. Barbarians and slaves detest science and destroy artistic monuments. Free men love them and preserve them". In Spain, after the disastrous consequences of the Disentailment of Mendizábal, it did not take long for the Provincial Monuments Commissions to emerge to try to stop a catastrophe in heritage, movable and immovable, bibliographic, musical and documentary.

By appreciating our cultural heritage, we can discover our diversity and initiate an intercultural dialogue on what we have in common with other realities. In this regard, there is nothing better than to recall this reflection by Mahatma Gandhi: "I do not want my house walled in on all sides or my windows sealed. I want the cultures of the whole world to blow into my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be swept away by any of them".

An advanced and free society must safeguard and properly manage its heritage.

An advanced, cultured society with high levels of well-being cannot allow its cultural heritage to be absent from its daily life. Progress, to a certain extent, can be measured by the cultural level it has reached. This has led to a great social demand in developed countries for the use and enjoyment of cultural goods. This has become a demand on institutions, which has translated into the right of citizens to culture, as recognised in various constitutional texts. The latter has also led to an assessment of the risks posed by overcrowding and the positive and negative aspects of cultural tourism.

In this sense, it is necessary to insist that the use and enjoyment of cultural heritage can and should be profitable from a management that implies its research, conservation and dissemination. The guidelines of UNESCO and other organisms insist on the knowledge, diffusion and sensitization around the cultural goods, proposing to the states programs of Education and information by means of courses, conferences and seminars in all the Degrees of the teaching, regulated and not regulated, in order to promote and to enhance the cultural value and educational of the same one. source Among the numerous texts emanating from high institutions, we will highlight one of the 1985 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Architectural Heritage of Europe, which calls for "raising public awareness of the value of architectural heritage not only as an element of cultural identity, but also as a source of inspiration and creativity for present and future generations".

Local entities and assets

Julio Valdeón affirms that the history of a town belongs to all its inhabitants and constitutes the best support to know where we are heading. If this past is linked to material testimonies, to cultural assets, the collective conscience will be much stronger. Losing the references of the past is tantamount to erasing the path and favoring disorientation. Octavio Paz wrote that "architecture is the least bribable witness of history", a statement that can be extrapolated to other cultural assets.

Faustino Menéndez Pidal reminded us that "the people who do not know their past, who ignore the ways by which they came to be where they are and to be what they are, are at the mercy of those who want to show them a falsified history for sectarian purposes. The installation in history is the most solid base of man, because it conditions all the Structures that situates him in society. When he loses it, he is left without roots, deprived of elements of judgment and choice".

The monuments, pieces and various objects that we have received defy time, constitute a door to the past and are a form of travel through history that, on many occasions, entail something transcendent. Without all these testimonies of the past, the individual runs the risk of getting lost in a world lacking tangible references, where the present can seem eternal. Contemplating, thinking and reasoning about cultural assets financial aid to understand the past, live the present and project oneself into the future without complexes.

A few days ago I had the pleasure of reading a article of M. A. Troitiño in a well-known magazine that spreads patrimonial issues of the Santa María la Real Foundation of Aguilar de Campoo. In his text he reflects on the rural world and the cultural bequest with a large dose of common sense and reality. He affirms that heritage is an important pillar to offer integral plans for the rural development , but neither the panacea nor the only element for that purpose. To intervene and safeguard their tangible and intangible cultural heritage, sometimes immense, they need not only legal texts that remain in the drawers, but the will and political commitment accompanied by significant economic resources. All in the interest of generating economic activity that attracts and, above all, fixes population.

Nor can we forget that history and heritage itself have been used by the political power, on numerous occasions, as source of legitimization and justification, since the past is rewritten, not infrequently, according to the needs and interests of the moment. Nowadays, we are faced with the problem of deconstructing constructions and assets with a specific ideological charge, built in the past, based on rather uncritical historiographic constructions, but which were an expression of specific situations. From the Romanesque portals, with so much interest in highlighting certain vices and sins on the part of the Church, to the expressions of political power, examples abound. To read the collective report , or rather the collective conscience, because report is very selective, there is nothing better than the presence of material works to visually explain a given historical context. And it is not worth resorting to arguments such as the mediocre quality of some works, as if only the production of great artists should be preserved, a fortiori, if they have other values. As a testimony, these phrases of someone, so little suspected of conservatism, as Victor Hugo, in 1871: "If a monument must be destroyed because of the memories it brings, let us tear down the Parthenon, which reminds us of pagan superstition; let us demolish the Alhambra, which represents the Mohammedan superstition; let us sink the Colosseum, which reminds us of the atrocious festivals where beasts ate men. In a word, let us destroy everything, for up to our days, all the monuments have been made by royalty and the people have not yet begun their own. To do evil while wishing to do evil is perversity (villainy); to do evil without wishing to do it is ignorance".

By way of coda

I end with a statement. Although there are numerous examples of what should not be done, I would like to highlight the exemplarity of those mayors, councilors and cultural managers who, for decades, have been clear about this, collaborating with the owners of collections of all subject, overcoming sterile polemics and trying to promote the study, conservation and dissemination of the works with clarity, depth and truth. In this way, the knowledge on the part of the citizens translates into appreciation and affection for the cultural heritage, as the best guarantee for its conservation. Men and women who, without noise, because "good does not make noise and noise does not do good", have understood that a person is not important or wise for occupying a position, but that the prudent and wise makes the position great. And with the allusion to wisdom, I am not referring to erudition, but to that mixture of knowledge and morals, of science and knowledge, of work and of vital orientation towards the just, the true and the beautiful.

Congratulations to so many people who, from their anonymity and wisdom, have been collaborating with their actions for the conservation of heritage to bequeath it, as the best gift, to future generations. From their localities they have known how to manage, allowing themselves to be advised by experts. In many cases they have set an example to some politicians who, as Baltasar Gracián would say, want to "always be the roosters of the advertising, and they sing so much that they get angry".

I have witnessed in numerous localities of the region, over several decades, how the attendees to cycles of dissemination around its rich heritage, have followed with attention different interventions and have left satisfied, coming to rediscover its past in the great buildings, fountains, bridges, sites, civil and domestic architecture and pieces of all subject, as well as in "the arcane of the things that seem vulgar and are wonderful" (Valle Inclán dixit). After the knowledge, comes the appreciation and a determined action in favor of its conservation. To invite, encourage, inspire and enthuse around cultural assets can be the objectives that complement the aphorism that reminds us: Nihil volitum quin praecognitum (Nothing is wanted if it is not first known).