Chapter 6 - Cultural landscapes and planning in Spain

Abstract

All landscapes are, by definition, cultural as they are «accumulators of heritage that fixes the process that forms them: they are both products and examples of their history» (Martínez de Pisón, 2007: 330). As territorial heritage, they are the result of the appropriation of space by the society that has modelled them and with which they are identified (Fernández & Silva, 2015: 256). From this heritage conception of the landscape, they all include a set of inherited resources that are the reflection of the values, beliefs and traditions in continuous evolution, together with aspects of the environment that appear through the interaction over time between the people and the space (CE, 2009). In order to correctly understand this, it is necessary to know the complementarity offered by the concepts of territory and heritage (Cañizares, 2009: p94 & ff.), as cultural landscapes appear through the hybridisation of these two concepts (Alonso, 2014: 221). The first concept, territory, is currently understood not only as the physical support of our activities, but also as «the most important heritage component of a human collective» (Fernández, 2005: 29). A «non-renewable, essential and limited asset», «a complex and fragile reality» that «contains ecological, cultural and heritage values that cannot be reduced to the value of the land» (AA.VV., 2006). The interest lies in the material reality of its organisation and geographical structures, but also in the interpretation that the culture makes of this medium, that is, of the landscape (Cruz & Español, 2009: 40). If the territory is broken down into landscapes, it is easy to understand their cultural nature, since they are «the mark or sign that imprints character on each territory» (Mata, 2008: 158). The second concept, heritage, is the indispensible reference in the concept of heritage or legacy for future generations. It has undergone a paradigmatic metamorphosis centred on the displacement of attention concerning heritage from the object (or heritage asset) to the subject (or agent of heritage status) (Silva & Fernández, 2017: 131), stressing the value attributed by the population (identity) and the institutions. Today, heritage is object, action, product and process, including not only the assets received as legacies, but also the processes that allow us to understand them, place them in their context, perceive them, manage them, and even modify or destroy them (Fairclough, 2009: p31 & ff.; Mata, 2016: 547).