On this day, 23 years ago, and after almost two years of work, the Church of the Virgin of Tobed, Santa Tecla in Cervera de la Cañada, the Collegiate Church of Santa María in Calatayud, La Seo, San Pablo and the Aljafería in Zaragoza were added to the list of sites highlighted by UNESCO as sites of outstanding universal value in the declaration of the Mudejar Architecture of Aragon as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The extension of the declaration to the province of Zaragoza highlighted the territorial nature of a style in which history, art, materials, landscape, traditions, and people are key.
We want to congratulate all those who work for this heritage and for their knowledge, undoubtedly the most powerful tool for its preventive conservation.
And, above all, thanks to the inhabitants who maintain these heritage sites, guarantors of this rich legacy we have inherited.
From Territorio Mudéjar, we celebrated this date today with the Mudéjar World Heritage Route, visiting the Collegiate Church of Santa María de Calatayud, the Church of Santa Tecla de Cervera de la Cañada, and the Church of the Virgin of Tobed, churches that reveal the paradigms of the style that holds the UNESCO World Heritage status. We also did so with live painting sessions by artist and researcher Pilar García Verón, who is part of the Territorio Mudéjar research network.
Specifically, on Tuesday, we will hold a meeting of researchers from the Territorio Mudéjar network with those responsible for many of the nearly fifty projects launched by this organization since its founding.
On 13 September we celebrated that it was six years ago that this network project saw the light of day after several years of work: Territorio Mudéjar was set up as a network for the management of heritage resources linked to the Mudejar, under the umbrella of the World Heritage brand held by some of our partners, but above all with quality in management as a guide, focused on the conservation of our tangible and intangible heritage as a key to the local development of our villages always as the north of the compass.
This six-year journey has brought us to 2024 with a powerful and consolidated network of management, knowledge, connections and projects that includes 47 villages, more than 50 researchers and transdisciplinary professionals, trainees and collaborations in international projects.
As you know, we like to celebrate by working and we are currently working on the new calls for Research Stays and Artistic Residencies, which we will soon make public. Our commitment to innovation and the promotion of projects that contribute to the development of villages and the responsible and sustainable use of cultural and natural heritage resources is proving to be a success. This year, the call will come with some new features that will allow us to further strengthen this network of knowledge about the Mudejar culture of our partner villages and to advance in the new uses of heritage.
Our work in the field is another of our hallmarks. You know that the Territorio Mudéjar team works in and for your villages and, thanks to the Routes project, in this work we ensure that the work we do is disseminated as widely as possible and, increasingly, there are visitors who accompany us to get to know your villages, discover your heritage and resources or get to know them in more depth. Always in small groups, with a very carefully planned programme and a route designed by heritage professionals. This year we are doing 14 different routes covering 47 destinations and the demand has meant that in this second part of the year we are increasing the number of transport places in order to be able to meet the requests.
In addition, we have taken a further step towards a la carte routes. These tailor-made heritage tours allow us to offer all the services of our partner localities to the traveller and aim to ensure that those who take them enjoy highly personalised explanations. We have already launched the first ones and we are working to give them a more international approach that combines a recreational and a scientific learning approach. Thanks to our network, in this case our participation with the Medina Network, these proposals will be presented in the next few months in Malaysia and Qatar…
We continue to travel outside our territory to bring it closer to new audiences and specialised forums. Thus, as the next event on the calendar, this week we are invited to the IX Iberian Meeting of World Heritage Managers in Sintra (Portugal), jointly organised by the Spanish and Portuguese Ministries of Culture.
And we continue to participate in national and international projects with the Turin Polytechnic Institute, the World Heritage Cultural Landscapes Alliance and other partners that make us grow as a network.
We think about the future and new professionals. That is why every year we train students thanks to the Desafío and Unita programmes – we are going to extend two of the scholarships – we collaborate with UNIVERSA and we advise on other projects of the Spanish Sustainable Development Network.
We have not lost our hallmark of providing personalised advice to our partner towns and, along these lines, we have developed special agreements with, for example, Ricla, where a dozen activities have been developed with the participation of local agents, or in Fuentes de Ebro, where we have just started the second phase and where technical support has been provided to make the heritage elements more accessible in terms of interpretation. And we are making progress on new agreements, as in the case of San Mateo de Gállego, which will soon be launched.
Our travellingexhibition “Territorio Mudéjar: the guide” continues to travel kilometres to take its didactic vision to all the towns and villages. Its next stop is Tarazona and soon it will also be on display in Mainar.
The Territorio Mudéjar network is also growing every year in terms of projects and this sixth birthday has left us with a very special one to develop. We are working to become the documentation centre for the Mudejar. Based on a special collaboration with the General Directorate of Heritage of the Government of Aragon, we are digitising all the files of more than 250 Mudejar buildings with some kind of protection according to the Aragonese Cultural Heritage Law. In this way, on the one hand, we generate our own documentary heritage, necessary for the knowledge of our fundamental resources, and on the other hand, we work to help the management processes in our localities to be agile, making available to the technical teams of our partner town councils the most complete information on the Mudejar buildings, essential for intervention, conservation or restoration projects, as well as, for example, for the application for funding through the different calls for subsidies.
Thank you very much to all of you for joining us and adding to these six years.
On a day like today in 2018, after many months of work, the association Territorio Mudéjar was set up as a unified and collaborative management network for the use of the historical and artistic resources linked to the important Mudejar heritage and which would serve as a driving force for the development of our villages.
Five years later, we celebrate our anniversary as a solid entity of 47 partners, with a multidisciplinary team of professionals, researchers and students; with international projects, a rich calendar of activities and, above all, an experience in responsible and professional heritage management always in search of local development and impact on localities.
The birthday surprises us at work, as usual. After attending our partners in a personalised way, today we are participating in an event of the Digitour project, which promotes the digitalisation and innovation of SMEs in the tourism sector. In this session, Victoria Trasobares, director of Territorio Mudéjar, and Miguel Bielsa, from Estudio Mique, will participate virtually in a meeting held in Burgas, Bulgaria, where they will give details of the project led by Territorio Mudéjar. Our organisation is coordinating the design of a quality seal to distinguish local establishments that offer appropriate services for scientific tourism linked to heritage and cultural resources. Specifically, the pilot project phase has begun with the redesign of the brand of the Posada del Almudí in Daroca, a hotel opened in a historic building with an interesting rehabilitation, and an establishment in Romania, Pensiunea Septiembrie in the town of Elsenita immersed in the spectacular cultural landscape of the Danube River.
At the same time, we are working with the Andalusian Medinas Network to form a working team that we will soon be telling you about. This network is an instrument for the economic and social development of the territories participating in the tourist experience. It aims to enhance the value of the Andalusian medinas and what their tangible and intangible heritage represents as a contribution of the Andalusian civilisation, particularly in its diversity (ethnic, linguistic and religious), as well as its techniques, sciences and arts.
We are also making progress in personalised management with our partners, studying their needs and signing various special agreements with them to form work teams to provide technical and scientific advice on projects such as the Tourism Sustainability Plan for the destination of Daroca or the special ones for Fuentes de Ebro, Ricla and San Mateo de Gállego to carry out specific activities.
We are about to launch our Mudejar Territory Routes 2023-2024 through the villages.
We continue to participate in international events that position us as an example of management, such as Cultourfair in Seville, one of the most prestigious fairs in cultural tourism related to heritage. In addition, we have already closed some 70 meetings with organisations from all over the world.
Soon we will also inform you that the Territorio Mudéjar team led by Victoria Trasobares has been selected by the Ministry of Culture to carry out the preparatory work for the management plan of the “Mudéjar Architecture of Aragon” as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Our network of researchers continues to grow with the new call for Stays and Projects that we are about to resolve and with the great success of our call for artistic residencies.
Our team of students is also growing thanks to the Desafío-Unita programme, which trains new professionals in heritage management.
And we are also growing in membership, which is our essence. With the incorporation of Tarazona, Pozuel de Ariza, Herrera de los Navarros, Ariza, Cariñena and Muel we have reached 47 members plus one collaborating member.
Many thanks to all of you who make it possible for us to continue growing with the compass that the Mudejar heritage is an engine for the development of the villages and an element of identity for the maintenance of the communities that make up our territory.
The temporary exhibition “Mudejar, the intelligence of beauty. 20th Anniversary World Heritage” arrives in Fréscano. This travelling exhibition commemorates the 20th anniversary of UNESCO World Heritage and will travel around our territory in the coming months. In Fréscano, it can be seen until 12 August from 18.30 to 20.00.
On the occasion of the exhibition and the incorporation of Fréscano to the Territorio Mudéjar network, during the weekend we will also make a presentation for all the inhabitants to know what it means to be part of the Territorio Mudéjar network and for them to get involved in our projects.
On Saturday 7th at 18.30 we will have a lecture on “Fréscano, Mudejar landscape” in the chapel of Nuestra Señora de la Huerta by Victoria E. Trasobares Ruiz, director of Territorio Mudéjar. The activity is free of charge.
This year, 2022, marks the 50th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention. It is an opportunity to reflect on the past, present, and future of its application in our territories and communities. Throughout this year, a series of activities organized by the various World Heritage managers in Spain will take place.
Among the activities of the Ministry of Culture, Education, and Sport is a photography exhibition at the Retiro Park in Madrid. This exhibition was on view these past few weeks and included a display of Aragonese Mudejar heritage declared a World Heritage Site, specifically the Collegiate Church of Calatayud.
Territorio Mudéjar has now been working for two years, guided by Mudejar heritage in the broadest sense, and we are tremendously grateful to everyone who makes it possible for us to continue building this collaborative network. We now form a community of 34 towns with their active inhabitants and a multi-disciplinary team of researchers, partners and students. Together we strive to make Mudejar heritage a driver of development for the towns and also an emblem of identity that helps uphold the population.
Over these two years, we have worked with scientific rigor to further the knowledge about Mudejar culture, we have acted as its spokesperson, and we have launched projects that contribute to the sustainable social and economic development of our network of towns.
Among the actions in our annual work plan, two initiatives stand out:
One, the Challenge Program, sponsored by the Provincial Government of Zaragoza through the Cátedra DPZ de Despoblación y Creatividad (Zaragoza Provincial Government Chair for Depopulation and Creativity), which enabled University of Zaragoza students to carry out internships in Territorio Mudéjar (four in 2019 and seven this year). The students in the 2019 edition wrapped up the program by putting what they had learned into practice with a tour of the towers in Ricla, Longares, Romanos, Terrer and Tauste. The participants in 2020, in turn, began in August with an introduction to the entity and its working methods, familiarizing them with the Territorio Mudéjar network and its main stakeholders, followed by training in diverse disciplines and fieldwork.
Two, the Gonzalo M. Borrás Gualis Fieldwork Grants, which make it possible to develop responsible, sustainable and innovative projects that have a direct impact on rural settings, foster their visibility and raise awareness about the area. In the spring, we completed the first edition with project presentations given by researchers. Now, we have just chosen the winning candidates in the second call for proposals, awarding five grants and one second prize in fields such as the recovery of construction materials like Mudejar plaster work, the conservation of traditional architecture, designing tours that combine agricultural cycles and Mudejar heritage, the creation of a Territorio Mudéjar podcast channel, a guide about historical carpentry in our towns and the study of new cultural management models for Mudejar civil architecture.
As part of our networking endeavors, through our collaboration with the ADRI groups, we continue working on the initiative called “Territorio Mudéjar circular desde la escuela” (Territorio Mudéjar, circular from schools), which aims to help the children in our towns learn to recognize and appreciate from a young age the heritage surrounding them, thus bolstering a sense of regional identity.
Furthermore, we are increasingly present at forums on heritage and innovation. In this regard, we participated in the 1st Annual ICOMOS Spain Symposium of Natural and Cultural Heritage, held in Madrid in November, where the latest research done in the field of monument preservation, restoration, documentation, awareness and dissemination was presented. Also in November, we attended the Meeting of Spanish World Heritage Managers, which gathered in Cordoba to discuss the topic of ‘World Heritage accessible to everyone’, organized by the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Sports.
In conjunction with other entities devoted to heritage management and rural development, in January we took part in the first meeting with local agents from the province of Zaragoza in the MOMAr Interreg Europe project –Models of Management for Singular Rural Heritage, an initiative led by the Provincial Government of Zaragoza for the purpose of designing new rural heritage management models that foster sustainable development and adapt to the specific features of each region. Along these lines, we also presented our working model at the MOMAr Interreg Europe meeting held in Corsica in March.
And in August we shared our innovative management of artistic and historical heritage in a rural setting at the CortonaOpen3Dworkshop , a specialized course in computer graphics and smart city design applied to cultural heritage, which was held in the Italian city of Cortona, in the province of Arezzo (Tuscany).
In terms of outreach and communication, the towns and heritage of Territorio Mudéjar were featured in the January issue of “World Heritage“ magazine, published by the UNESCO World Heritage Centre.
Moreover, the Mudejar architecture in our member towns can now be accessed at the click of a mouse by anyone, anywhere in the world, thanks to an initiative by the Provincial Government of Zaragoza in collaboration with Territorio Mudéjar, which made it possible to include these monuments in the “UNESCO World Heritage” collection on Google Arts and Culture. This multi-lingual platform has received more than 175 million visits and includes a mobile application that has been downloaded more than 30 million times, offering virtual tours of museums and heritage treasures around the world.
In addition, for yet another year, we participated in the course entitled Viaje al arte mudéjar (Journey into Mudejar art) in July, one of the special courses offered by University of Zaragoza, aimed at directly studying Mudejar art by taking in-depth tours of the most emblematic monuments in these areas.
In terms of special events, in December we set up a special schedule of activities to commemorate the 18th anniversary of the designation of Mudejar architecture of Aragon as UNESCO World Heritage. This included promoting visits to the towns, project activities and a live radio broadcast from Tobed.
In January, at FITUR 2020, the important tourism trade fair, we presented our proposal for developing Mudejar heritage management practices that foster responsible, sustainable tourism designed by those in the places where the heritage is located, always in conjunction with their inhabitants.
And on April 18, we joined in on the celebration of the International Day for Monuments and Sites with special videos.
During the year we also bolstered our presence in the media and in social media by creating our own content (videos, live broadcasts…) and new YouTube and LinkedIn channels. Our goal is to make our networks the benchmark space for information and knowledge about Mudejar, in the broadest sense, and to spotlight our member towns and the activities taking place there.
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