Chapter 5 - The creative and prudent management of territorial heritage

Abstract

Throughout the 20th century, but especially at the turn of the millennium, the social concern for the conservation of the legacy left by our ancestors has been on the increase. This applied to both natural and cultural heritage. This was owing to various reasons of a historic, artistic, architectural, scientific, technical, or traditionalist nature. This awareness of today’s society is related to a movement that aims to preserve the remains of antiquity and to rescue the cultural manifestations that were disappearing. The objective is to find a new identity in the roots that were fast becoming blurred in a world constantly evolving towards globalisation. In addition, such measures as the interpretation of the landscape, the restoration of material elements, or the reinterpretation of immaterial heritage, have all brought about the revaluation of heritage based on the assignation of complementary, alternative or substitutive uses that can generate economic development. In other cases, the same measures have boosted initiatives aimed at providing a public service. There has been a shift in humanity’s attitude to heritage, faced with the fear of losing our identifying traits, our collective memory and our bonds with the territory. Society is now facing the future on the basis of a new paradigm that embraces the diversity of the vestiges of heritage landmarks in the physical environment and of the cultural fabric as a differentiating aspect and resource for lasting local development in the face of the contemporary social and cultural demands and needs (Dower, 1998: 8). Thus, the concept of heritage has evolved from a restricted vision in past centuries to a plural and integral view of the many dimensions involved. The main concern in the past about heritage was the protection, custody and conservation of the asset for society, because of its intrinsic values from the «historic and artistic» point of view, as the greatest exponent of a cultural period. This approach has remained unaltered until recently, when the unidimensional definition of heritage has been replaced with the inclusion of a wide spectrum of elements and perspectives that have had «cultural» value added to them. The new definition of «cultural» heritage not only includes the properties and material objects of artistic, historic, paleontological, archaeological, ethnographic, scientific or technical interest, as well as the inventories of documents, bibliographic references and linguistic expressions (languages, dialects and idiom), but also the immaterial heritage made up of the activities, knowledge, practices, works and manifestations of popular and traditional culture.