Ricla and TM create a technical office to develop a strategic tourism and heritage plan.

Ricla Town Council and Territorio Mudéjar have signed a special agreement to develop a strategic plan for sustainable tourism and heritage action, which consists of the creation of a technical management office to advance strategic projects and develop a calendar of activities in the town.

The agreement will have an initial duration of six months. To develop it, the association Territorio Mudéjar has set up a work team made up of young professionals who have been trained in the organisation thanks to the Desafío-Arraigo internship programme, with which Territorio Mudéjar has been collaborating since 2019 and which has made it possible to create a pool of emerging professionals with the necessary skills for the needs specified by the Ricla Town Council.

This morning this collaboration was presented at the Diputación de Zaragoza by the Deputy Delegate for Culture, Charo Lázaro, the Mayor of Ricla, Ignacio Gutiérrez, and the Director of Territorio Mudéjar, Victoria Trasobares.

The Deputy Delegate for Culture, Charo Lázaro, pointed out that the collaboration presented today “is in line with the work of the Diputación de Zaragoza: offering services to citizens and promoting collaboration between municipalities”. “I would like to highlight the value of these actions that Territorio Mudéjar carries out with its partner towns and villages and that manage to become a strategic pillar of development and directly involve the localities”, said the deputy.

The mayor of Ricla, Ignacio Gutiérrez, has argued the great potential that Ricla has. “Thanks to this agreement we are going to take advantage of this potential to contribute to local development through a tourism and heritage strategy,” he explained. “Using heritage as an engine for development is a great opportunity to establish new pillars of growth and wealth creation that are sustainable and inclusive,” added the mayor.

The director of Territorio Mudéjar, Victoria Trasobares, pointed out that this is the third special agreement that the organisation has signed with a partner town council and that it involves introducing a way of working based on the quality and sustainability of resources from a strategic and unitary supervision. “The model consists of creating advisory committees that the partner town councils can use to contribute a strategic vision to their local resource management work”, she pointed out.

Citizen participation

The team will be supervised by the project management area of Territorio Mudéjar, which will define the strategic lines and integrate the local actions with the different innovation projects that Territorio Mudéjar develops in its Research and Project Stays. A strategy for citizen participation will also be developed in order to gather the contributions that neighbours wish to make to the design of the strategic plan.

This agreement will allow new professionals to work in Ricla to implement pilot actions of preventive heritage conservation, accessibility and heritage visits, as well as actions of citizen participation with the different local agents.

It will also contribute to advancing the concept of cultural landscape and rediscovering the local castle under restoration from a unique model of transdisciplinarity in the teams currently working on the project.

The project started in February with the first sectoral meetings, which will continue in the coming months, and will start different public activities from March with a calendar of conference visits. The activities will have a fixed part (historical-artistic visit to the heritage of Ricla) and another thematic part that will change on each date with specialists or local experts.

Calendar of activities

Saturday 16 March: architecture and town planning. Urban tour in which the history of Ricla will be explained through the evolution of urban planning and the explanation of its main architectural landmarks, such as the church of the Assumption or the castle.

Saturday 20 April: Landscape. There will be a visit to the architecture and town planning of the town that bring together the life of the residents of Ricla with special attention to the landscape, which is the context that has conditioned and made the town evolve in a certain way.

Saturday 11 May: palaeontology. Ricla has a rich palaeontological heritage located in the surrounding area. Through the route, you can see how this legacy from thousands of years ago still conditions the town today.

By mid-June. Ricla with the family. Educational activity. This is a route with a markedly didactic and educational character. It is aimed at all ages and will take up the work carried out in the 2021-2022 school year with CEIP Maestro Monreal on the project “Circular. Family walks” project. A project of materials for family and educational visits, carried out thanks to the Rural Development Programme (PDR) of Aragon 2014-2020 in the call for aid for the preparation and implementation of cooperation projects between local action groups, for the year 2019 through the group Fedivalca – Comarcas de Valdejalón and Cariñena.

Each dissemination activity will have the collaboration of local people and different gastronomic presentations such as seasonal fruits (cherries, peaches and different varieties of stone fruit), garlic, oil and wine, honey and preserved candied fruit such as figs, as well as meats and bakery and pastry preparations.

Offer of curricular and training internships for profiles linked to heritage

Territorio Mudéjar’s strategic objective is to promote curricular or training internships and to professionalise profiles linked to heritage in order to boost employment in rural areas, attract professionals and develop projects that involve the conservation of our heritage and investment in our villages as a differentiating element.

Rural Campus: This initiative, developed by the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, in collaboration with the Ministry of Universities and public universities, will allow university students of any official qualification to carry out academic internships in municipalities of less than 5,000 inhabitants.

Desafío and Arraigo Programmes. Territorio Mudéjar will participate one more year in the edition of ‘Erasmus Rural’, funded by the Diputación de Zaragoza and managed by the University of Zaragoza, so that students and graduates of the Aragonese academic institution carry out internships in the rural areas of the province of Zaragoza and that seeks to contribute to the knowledge and talent to reach the rural environment. We will soon know more details about this initiative. Here you have the information about last year’s initiative:

For another year, we are participating in the rural mobility internship programme between the partner universities of the UNITA project.

Territorio Mudéjar is also working on the European Universities for the European Union (EU4EU) initiative that connects universities, companies and young professionals from all over Europe.

Our entity also offers the possibility of co-supervising final degree projects (TFG) and final master’s degree projects (TFM) linked to our territory and our strategic lines of work.

The call for proposals is open on a permanent basis. If you have a proposal, do not hesitate to contact us and tell us about your project.

The exhibition “Mudejar, the guide” travels to Tauste

The exhibition “Mudejar, the guide” has travelled to Tauste. The director of Territorio Mudéjar, Victoria Trasobares, has been in charge of presenting this exhibition in the Casa de Cultura of the town. Eugenia Gallego, project assistant at Territorio Mudéjar, explained the exhibition. In addition, there has been a guided tour in which we have also been accompanied by the Councillor for Culture of the City Council of Tauste, Ángel Ansó; Pilar Fresca, technician of Culture of the City Council; José Ángel Cardona, responsible for Tourism of the City Council; and Isabel Ferrer, from the office of local development of Tauste.

The exhibition can be seen from 20 February to 3 March at the Casa de Cultura, from Monday to Friday from 9.00 to 13.00 and from 17.00 to 20.00. On Sundays, from 17.00 to 20.00.

Territorio Mudéjar incorporates 8 partner towns and now has a network of 47 municipalities working to promote the management and dissemination of Mudejar culture.

Territorio Mudéjar has added 8 municipalities to its network, making a total of 47 associated localities that benefit from an action programme to strengthen the management, research and dissemination of Mudejar heritage, as well as the creation of a network of professionals and jobs linked to the management of these historical-artistic resources.

The association of municipalities, promoted by the Diputación de Zaragoza, has ratified the incorporation of the towns of Ariza, Calatorao, Cariñena, Gelsa, Herrera de los Navarros, Muel, Pozuel de Ariza and Tarazona in its general assembly of members.

At the assembly, chaired by the mayor of Tobed, Juan Antonio Sánchez Quero, and attended by the mayors of the member municipalities, Victoria Trasobares, director of the entity, presented the action plan to be developed in 2024.

The programme maintains a commitment to research for the development of projects on Mudejar culture through the Gonzalo M. Borrás Gualis Research and Project Stays, through which some 40 professionals have already participated. Currently, three stays and three artistic residencies are underway and there will be a new call for applications in 2024. In addition, the organisation continues to strengthen its network of heritage management professionals through curricular and extracurricular internship programmes and participation in programmes such as Desafío-Arraigo and UNITA: 29 students have already been trained at Territorio Mudéjar and this year there will be a new call for internships.

Territorio Mudéjar will continue to offer personalised management to its members, studying their needs and signing special agreements with them to form technical and scientific advisory work teams for projects such as the Daroca Destination Tourism Sustainability Plan, or the special agreements with Fuentes de Ebro, Ricla and San Mateo de Gállego to carry out specific activities.

The entity will continue to make progress on key projects such as Didactics of the Mudejar -which makes it possible to generate heritage-based learning activities for rural schools and to make available materials; the Territorio Mudéjar routes by the partner localities, which have been a success with the public at their launch and are already highly occupied for the coming months; or the project Study of Aragonese Mudejar art, the legacy of Gonzalo M. Borrás Gualis, which implies having a growing, interdisciplinary and international working team, a high-level European team that can lay the foundations for future European and international cooperation work.

In parallel, the entity is working on framework agreements to create teams of solvent partners such as the Medina Network, to form a working team and collaborate on international tourism experience projects; the Alliance of Cultural Landscapes, of which Territorio Mudéjar has been a member since November last year; and the Turin Polytechnic Institute.

In addition, Territorio Mudéjar will continue to participate in national and internationalevents that position the entity as an example of management and in international projects such as the continuity of the Digitour project or fairs such as Cultourfair 2024.

Digitour Event: Shaping and Financing the Digital Future of Tourism

Today we participated in the event DIGITOUR: Forging and financing the Digital Future of Tourism, which was held at the Pablo Gargallo Museum in Zaragoza. There we talked about our participation in the #Digitour project, which implements digital tools at the service of tourism companies, in our case located in towns with a very relevant historical and artistic heritage.

Working on the possibilities of establishments with a historical and heritage identity can generate a new customer profile, improve a business positioning that looks beyond “classic tourism” and, for the towns in the Territorio Mudéjar network, work on the preventive conservation of their resources by favouring the work of specialised professionals.

For this reason, Territorio Mudéjar is coordinating the design of a quality seal to distinguish rural establishments and help them to offer appropriate services for scientific tourism linked to heritage and cultural resources.

Where do we do it? The pilot project has started with the redesign of the brand of the Posada del Almudí in Daroca – a historic building in the centre of the town with an interesting rehabilitation – and an establishment in Romania, Pensiunea Septiembrie in the town of Elsenita – a recently constructed building in the Natural Park of the Iron Gates.

These establishments have become the test bed for designing the service model that a travelling cultural heritage management professional needs on a day-to-day basis.

Who do we do it with? Our digital provider is Estudio Mique Diseño.

*The project, called DIGITOUR, is funded by the European Commission’s Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises under the COSME COS-TOURINN-2020-3-04 programme.

What are we pursuing?

The project aims to position these two accommodations as centres of excellence for the reception of researchers and creatives and to become a local driver to activate other businesses related to the services required by these travellers/workers.

Territorio Mudéjar is leading the preliminary work to draw up the Management Plan for Mudéjar Architecture in Aragon as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Today we celebrate the 22nd anniversary of the declaration of the Mudejar Architecture of Aragon as a UNESCO World Heritage Site with an important announcement: the Mudejar Territory team, led by Victoria Trasobares, is going to carry out the necessary preliminary work for the drafting, in the medium term, of the Management Plan for the “Mudejar Architecture of Aragon” as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Our project has been selected in the 2023 call for grants for projects for the conservation and dissemination of World Heritage properties of the Ministry of Culture and Sport. We will thus form part of a group of more than 20 Spanish organisations that will be working over the coming months to promote and improve the application of the World Heritage Convention and its guidelines.

These grants are financed by the Ministry of Culture and are intended to encourage the development of projects for the management, protection and conservation of these assets, as well as to promote their accessibility, visibility and dissemination at national and international level. In addition, one of the specific objectives this year, in line with the Mudejar Territory project, was to work on management plans in order to have an instrument that would enable all areas of management, protection, research, dissemination and territorial and social impact to be addressed in a comprehensive, sustainable and effective manner.

This work will begin with a diagnosis of the state of conservation of the assets, the instruments for their protection, their management and their signposting and dissemination. In addition, working groups will be set up with the institutions involved, with a strong focus on the territorial impact. The project will be developed through technical visits and field work.

We also continue to work in the territory with technical visits, such as those in December in Cervera de la Cañada and Tobed, to carry out one of our most important actions: professional technical advice to partner town councils on aspects of management, custody and conservation of our Mudejar heritage.

*This project is part of the 2023 grants for projects for the conservation, protection and dissemination of World Heritage properties of the call of the Directorate General of Fine Arts, Ministry of Culture.

Technical conference on Andalusian heritage as a cultural, tourist and economic asset

Territorio Mudéjar was this Tuesday invited to the opening table of the provincial technical conference “The Andalusian heritage as a cultural, touristic and economic value for the future of the province of Cordoba”, organised by the Las Fuentes Foundation with the sponsorship of the Provincial Council of Cordoba and the collaboration of the University of Cordoba.

At this meeting, the Medina Network was presented at a conference attended by the following participants:

  • Felipe Vidales, Complutense University of Madrid, who spoke on “El Toledo islámico, conexiones con otros centros andalusíes” (Islamic Toledo, connections with other Andalusian centres).
  • Victoria Trasobares, director of Territorio Mudéjar, who spoke about “Networking around Mudejar heritage”.
  • Bárbara Ruiz Bejarano, from the Las Fuentes Foundation and TM researcher, who spoke about the Medina Network and Muslim-Friendly tourism.

The network of medinas is a plural and open initiative that seeks to culturally and socio-economically revitalise municipalities in the Iberian Peninsula that possess a legacy of Islamic origin, whether Andalusian or contemporary. The project also aims to promote tourism and sustainable cultural experiences.

Territorio Mudéjar and the DPZ launch a new edition of the Mudéjar routes that will visit 48 municipalities in 14 visits.

“Discover Mudejar Territory. 14 routes, 48 destinations” offers a calendar with 29 dates on which it will be possible to book one of the 14 guided tours to discover the Mudejar heritage, the landscape, the traditions and the gastronomy of the 48 municipalities through which they will pass. As a novelty, this year the visits are free of charge and those interested will only have to pay the cost of transport from Zaragoza if necessary.

The routes will start on 3 December and will run until the end of next year.

The routes were presented this morning by Cristina Palacín, the Zaragoza Provincial Council’s Deputy Delegate for Tourism, and Victoria Trasobares, the Director of Territorio Mudéjar.

The aim of the routes is to discover and enjoy the Mudejar style in the province and to learn about its evolution from the 13th century to the end of the 16th century. They are divided into five themes so that visitors can enjoy the urban beauty of the coexistence of the Christian, Jewish and Muslim populations; the origins of this artistic style, its language and building tradition; get to know one of the key elements of Mudejar art: the towers; enjoy the fortress churches and understand how the Mudejars integrated the landscape and the materials of the area; and discover the monuments declared World Heritage by Unesco: the collegiate church of Santa María de Calatayud, Santa Tecla de Cervera de la Cañada and the church of the Virgin of Tobed.

Those interested can already book their place through the Territorio Mudéjar website, by calling 876 634 125 or by sending an email to rutas@territoriomudejar.es.

Territorio Mudéjar awards three stays and three artistic residencies for innovative projects that promote the conservation and use of Mudejar heritage in rural areas.

The Gonzalo M. Borrás Gualis stays to develop pilot projects will last six months and almost 15 villages, out of the 48 partners, will receive expert visits from the researchers.
Territorio Mudéjar has awarded three research stays and three artistic residencies aimed at supporting the work of researchers and project promoters who want to work on the development of villages through the responsible and sustainable use of cultural and natural heritage resources. This is the fifth edition of the Gonzalo M. Borrás Gualis research stays and projects and both the stays and the artistic residencies.
The projects selected range from research into new models of spiritual or religious tourism away from overcrowding, the study of painted inscriptions in Mudejar art, symbolism in our heritage, Mudejar ceramics, light in Mudejar spaces and dance and space from an artistic point of view.
These projects are in addition to the 23 from previous editions and the nearly 50 professionals who have formed the network of researchers of the stays since they were launched in 2019 and have provided new perspectives on the management of Mudejar heritage, have had a positive impact on the villages and have promoted an interdisciplinary work network. In addition, specifically, they have improved knowledge of the Mudejar as a World Heritage Site and the benefits it brings as an international brand recognised by Unesco.
The projects selected for Research Stays are:
  • New narratives on Mudejar heritage aimed at the public of knowledge and spiritual tourism in a global way. The author is Bárbara Ruiz Bejarano, PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies (University of Alicante and Las Fuentes Foundation). This research project is part of the line “Strategic management of Mudejar heritage. Cultural landscape and urban landscape” and aims to generate dissemination narratives about the territory and research on a muslim-friendly, religious and knowledge tourism that adapts to the reality of the Mudejar heritage and its villages.
  • Reading the Mudejar: Arabic inscriptions in medieval Aragonese churches (13th-15th centuries). The author is María del Mar Valls Fusté, PhD in art history (Rovira i Virgili University) and the research project is part of the “New perspectives on Mudejar art” line. The project aims to study the inscriptions in Arabic preserved in medieval Aragonese interiors, with special attention to those present on the wooden roofs and alfarjes of Mudejar buildings.
  • Aesthetics and symbolism in Mudejar heritage. The author is Estrella Noguera Iturralde, philosopher and master in ancient world and archaeological heritage (Basque Public University and University of Zaragoza). It is part of the line “New views on Mudejar art” and studies the symbolism in the ornamental object of Aragonese Mudejar buildings from the point of view of art history and philosophical aesthetics.
The selected artist residencies are:
  • Mudéjar clay, by Javier Seral Posac, industrial designer, engineer in industrial organisation and senior technician in artistic ceramics. Mud is the basis of Mudejar construction and the author intends to use it to create pieces that reflect the Mudejar tradition and inspiration in the transformation of mud into ceramics. The residency will consist of the search for quarries, analysis of the plasticity of the samples, extraction of the clays and construction of the pieces.
  • The wall as dermis. Light in the Mudéjar II by the artist and visual arts researcher Pilar García Verón (Complutense University of Madrid). This residency continues the stay that the author carried out in 2022-2023 and studies the Mudejar as a screen for the projection and manifestation of light as a manifestation of divinity. On this occasion, she studies the filtered light of Mudéjar sacred spaces and its transcendence in space and time.
  • Incorporate. On the vulnerable or how to channel knowledge by Patricia Álvarez Álvaro, a graduate in Arabic Philology (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) and trained in dance and dramaturgy of the image. This residency is based on a dialogue between the body and the Mudejar heritage space, through dance, using different techniques and skills: dance, theatre, performative installation, creative writing…

DIGITOUR Project: Visit to Pensiunea Septiembrie in Elsenita, Romania

We travelled to Romania to further advance the DIGITOUR project, which aims to boost the tourism sector by bringing together tourism companies with innovative and digital solution providers and by using territorial and cultural heritage for tourism purposes.

Our destination was Eselnita, the location of the hotel Pensiunea Septiembrie which, together with the Posada del Almudí in Daroca, is part of the pilot project we are working on. Specifically, the hotel in Eselnita is a recently constructed building in the Puertas de Hierro Natural Park and there we have been working on the ground (and with a view) together with Alexandro Cunicel, the owner of the establishment.

We remind you that Territorio Mudéjar is coordinating the design of a quality seal to distinguish local establishments and help them to offer appropriate services for scientific tourism linked to heritage and cultural resources.

Our work consisted of studying and analysing common needs through technical visits in order to study the design of a branding and virtual spaces for dissemination following the guidelines of heritage identity as a singularity.

The two establishments of the consortium -Pensiunea Septiembrie in Romania and the Posada del Almudí in Daroca- have common characteristics: they are large spaces, with a strong link to their natural context, located in rural areas with a very low population density, which nevertheless maintain strong links with important cultural entities due to the rich cultural heritage of the area.

This project values the possibilities of the two hotels as remote workplaces for researchers, creatives and other professionals who can develop their work individually and where the influence of the context can be of great help to the research/creative process.

The recent events of the pandemic have led many workers to reconsider their workplace, understanding that new technologies offer many possibilities of connection and on the other hand allow an approach to remote places whose characteristics, relationship with the environment, surrounding landscape, etc., can be very beneficial for the work process. can be very beneficial for the work process.

To this end, it is necessary to work on their strategic positioning and on a rebranding that attracts this type of travellers/workers who can stay in these establishments for long periods of time, linked to their work processes.

*The DIGITOUR project is funded by the European Commission ‘s Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in the framework of the COSME COS-TOURINN-2020-3-04 programme.