The director of Territorio Mudéjar, Victoria Trasobares, presented the organisation this Wednesday in Utebo together with the mayoress of the town, Gema Gutiérrez. There she spoke about the lines of work, the projects, such as the routes, and explained what it means to be part of the Territorio Mudéjar network.
In addition, we were able to see the travelling exhibition “Mudéjar exhibition, the intelligence of beauty. 20th anniversary of the UNESCO World Heritage declaration”.
More than 30 experts analysed the challenges facing the tourism sector in the wake of the pandemic over two days at the 2nd Ibero-American Meeting on Travel, Communication and Tourism: Historical Heritage, held in Calatayud.
The director of Territorio Mudéjar, Victoria Trasobares, took part in this event that seeks to reflect on three key concepts that have been impacted by the coronavirus: travel, tourism and communication.
These conferences are organised by the degree in Journalism of the Universidad San Jorge, the Master in Travel Journalism of the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona and Turismo de Aragón.
Journalists Rosa María Calaf and David Jiménez were in charge of opening the event and spoke about the differences between tourists and travellers at a table moderated by José Juan Verón, director of the Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism (USJ).
There was also time to enjoy the heritage of Calatayud: San Juan el Real, San Pedro de los Francos and the collegiate church of Santa María, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
“It is important to evaluate the impact of actions to disseminate heritage. What you do at the heritage level must first be known by the people who live in the same place,” explained Victoria Trasobares.
How quickly the months go by. Without realising it, the students of the Desafío 2022 Programme have reached the final stretch of their internships. This week, the Territorio Mudéjar team and the network of collaborators and trainers had a meeting to evaluate the internships. A small spoiler: we are delighted with the result.
Thank you all for helping us to continue to build our network of professionals.
The director of Territorio Mudéjar, Victoria Trasobares, participated a few days ago in the conference ‘Entrepreneurship in the tourism sector’, which was held in Calatayud as part of the Aragonese Entrepreneurship Week.
The session was also attended by Luis Poch, CEO of Bikefriendly Group; Víctor Millán, manager of Balneario Sicilia-Serón, and Lucas Montaner, manager of Gambito Club Golf Calatayud. Jesús Brotons was in charge of moderating the round table.
The event was also attended by the mayor of Calatayud, José Manuel Aranda, the manager of the Aragón Emprende Foundation, Pedro Pardo, and the president of the ADRI Calatayud-Aranda, José Ignacio Gallego.
The Casa de las Conchas de Borja, a 16th century Renaissance palace that was declared a national monument in 1978, has today inaugurated its restoration after being closed for 40 years.
It is now reopening as a library and conference centre after an investment of more than 1.3 million euros, financed almost equally by the DPZ and the City Council.
Consolidation and rehabilitation work on the Casa de las Conchas, an emblematic building owned by the municipality and located in the historic centre of Borja, began in the early 1980s, but was not completed and the building has been protected by scaffolding for 24 years.
In 2018, the Diputación de Zaragoza and the Consistory started the definitive restoration of the palace. Once completed, the more than 2,000 square metres of the Casa de las Conchas will be recovered for the enjoyment of the people of Borja.
The inauguration was also attended by the mayor of Borja, Eduardo Arilla, and the rest of the municipal corporation; the president of the Comarca Campo de Borja, María Eugenia Coloma; the provincial deputies Feliciano Tabuenca and Elena García Juango; and other mayors of the area. Also in attendance was the director of Territorio Mudéjar, Victoria Trasobares.
The palace is a residential building built for the Vera family between the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century (it was completed in 1524). Originally, the entrance door to the Casa de las Conchas was decorated with iron nails in the shape of shells, which gave the building its name. After its declaration as a national monument in 1978, it is now protected as an Asset of Cultural Interest (BIC).
Territorio Mudéjar has awarded three research stays and four runners-up prizes to carry out innovative projects that contribute to the development of the partner towns through the responsible and sustainable use of cultural and natural heritage resources.
This is the fourth call for applications for the stays named after Gonzalo M. Borrás Gualis as a tribute to the distinguished professor and expert in Mudejar art. Each of the stays is endowed with 6,000 euros and each runner-up with 4,000 euros.
The projects selected by a team of interdisciplinary experts range from the creation of a white book to conserve traditional architecture, the drafting of a digitalisation strategy, sound contexts in the Mudéjar through early music, a strategy to make the Mudéjar heritage visible to the Muslim public, the study of the geometric elements of Mudéjar churches, the creation of analysis maps of the partner towns and the study of light in the Mudéjar through drawing and painting.
These projects are in addition to the 16 from previous editions and the more than 36 professionals who have formed the network of researchers of the stays since they were launched in 2019 and who 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 the knowledge of the Mudejar as World Heritage and the benefits it brings as an international brand recognised by Unesco.
The selected stays are:
1-“Prevention and conservation from urban planning: development of a tool for the protection of traditional architecture”. Javier Gómez Patrocinio (PhD in Architecture, Polytechnic University of Valencia) proposes the development of recommendations, in the form of a white paper, to serve as a framework for implementing criteria for the conservation of local traditional architecture in urban planning management.
2-“Mudejar Smart 3D. Digitalisation strategy for the Mudejar territory”. Gian Luca Vita (Politecnico di Milano) and Marco Luchini (Politecnico di Milano and Federico II University of Naples) propose the creation of a series of three-dimensional models for
test the implementation of a way of working with the heritage digitisation process that is useful when generating new projects. They plan to draft a digitisation strategy for Territorio Mudéjar that is adapted to the specific circumstances of the territory and its heritage.
3-“Contextos sonoros y arte mudéjar, una aproximación incipiente desde la interpretación históricamente informada (ss. XVI-XVIII): ecos del pasado y proyecto de futuro” (Sound contexts and Mudejar art, an incipient approach from historically informed interpretation (16th-18th centuries): echoes of the past and a project for the future). The musicians and researchers Carlos Bonal, Miguel Bonal and Carlos González (University of Granada, Royal Conservatory of The Hague and University of Castilla La Mancha) aim to generate new artistic contexts through the study of early music and the original acoustics of the Mudejar heritage space and to reflect on the possibilities for the future of this heritage as a space linked to musical practice.
The selected runners-up are:
1-“Assessment of the muslim-friendly potential of Territorio Mudéjar for the reception of knowledge tourism”. Bárbara Ruiz Bejarano, PhD in Arab and Islamic Studies (University of Alicante and Las Fuentes Foundation) studies the opportunity to make Aragon’s great Mudejar heritage visible to Muslim tourists, based on a new form of knowledge tourism, of higher quality, centred on heritage, history and its contemporary heritage through the “Halal” tradition.
2-‘Mudéjar RGB’. Víctor Solanas-Díaz, PhD in Art History (University of Zaragoza), will study in depth the geometric elements used on the exterior of the main Mudéjar churches to obtain a study of the rhythm through a series of ‘motifs’ that he will then take as a reference in the artistic interventions that he will develop linking the Mudéjar heritage and its translation to different museums and art galleries in Spain.
3-‘Mudejar landscape’. Javier Montori Montolar and Esteban Lahoz Montolar, graduates in Fine Arts (University of Barcelona) and Master PhotoEspaña, propose to digitise the terrain and morphology of the villages through a series of analysis cartographies (the starting point will be a photogrammetric survey of the village). With this, they aim to create a sustainable tool that contributes to heritage conservation and attracts the scientific and educational community.
4-“Mudejar as dermis. Light in Mudejar art”. The artist and plastic arts researcher Pilar García Verón (Complutense University of Madrid) seeks to bring the public closer to Mudejar art through the study of its aesthetic variables. Through drawing and painting, she aims to capture a specific stage in the temporal and spatial development of light in order to show how it dematerialises form.
Territorio Mudéjar celebrates its fourth anniversary as a model of success
Territorio Mudéjar celebrates this week its fourth anniversary as an association of town councils, currently 40 member municipalities and one collaborating partner, whose objective is to consolidate a unified and collaborative management network for the use of the historical and artistic resources linked to the important Mudejar heritage, understanding them as an engine for the development of the villages and as an element of identity for the maintenance of the communities that make up our territory.
As a result of these four years of work, Territorio Mudéjar has become a model of good innovative practices at international level (it is taken as a model of successful management, for example, in the regions of Groningen -Netherlands-, in the Heritage Lab project of the Libau Foundation, and in South Bohemia -Czech Republic-). It has also been selected by the Ministry of Culture to present the entity as a management model at the 16th Meeting of World Heritage managers to be held on 28 and 29 September in Mérida.
Territorio Mudéjar has participated in the international conference on Culture, Territory and Politics organised by the research group Observatorio Aragonés de Arte en la Esfera Pública and the City Council of Graus. It also has the support of the Institute of Heritage and Humanities and the Vice-rectorate of Academic Policy of the University of Zaragoza. In this meeting, held online, national and international speakers analysed the role of institutions in heritage management, the reality of heritage in rural areas and its implication in the landscape and the territory. They also reflected on the different ways in which we interact with heritage: from destruction to rehabilitation and its use as a revitalising resource. Territorio Mudéjar took part in this discussion forum of interest to researchers, managers, teachers and students of disciplines related to heritage management. We spoke on the subject of “Heritage in rural areas: uses, proposals, possibilities and realities”. Specifically, the director of Territorio Mudéjar, Victoria Trasobares, spoke about the management of UNESCO World Heritage in rural areas and detailed how the Territorio Mudéjar network works to build a new model from the local reality. The presentation focused on research and on projects linked to UNESCO World Heritage, the cultural and historical-artistic heritage management and territorial development strategies based on culture. What a pleasure to share good practices with heritage professionals!
We are never lazy to go back to school, especially if we do it to talk about how to bring the Mudejar heritage closer to future generations.
Over the last few months we have been working with the teams from schools such as CEIP Maestro Monreal in Ricla, CEIP Virgen de la Peana in Ateca, CEIP Fernando el Católico in Villarreal de Huerva, CEIP Santa Ana in Mainar, CRA Río Ribota (Aniñón, Cervera de la Cañada, Torralba de Ribota, Villarroya de la Sierra) and CEIP Fernando el Católico in Quinto to develop our Circular desde la escuela rural (Rural School in motion) programme. And we continue to move forward in the next phase and to expand this network.
It is clear to us that the rural school is a fundamental agent for the durability of links with places. As the director of Territorio Mudéjar, Victoria Trasobares, explains: “It means working from the foundations and with a medium-long term vision given that it allows us a double objective. On the one hand, to work on consolidating the school, and above all the teachers, as an active agent of quality. A measurable objective of this would be to increase the degree of reinforcement of the teaching teams. Education professionals who choose the rural school as their life project”.
On the other hand, she adds: “Working on local pride and rootedness, the rural school must be able to educate individuals with analytical skills and this can only be achieved by giving possibilities of knowledge, so that the villages unfold their full potential as a space for active learning and become a possible vital option for the future”.
Circular desde la escuela rural (Rural School in motion) is a cooperation project between rural development groups coordinated by the ADRI Calatayud-Aranda group, together with Cedemar, Adefo Cinco Villas, Asomo Moncayo, Adrae Comarca Ribera Alta del Ebro, Fedivalca and Adri Jiloca Gallocanta, and financed by the Government of Aragon, from the Leader programme, and the Provincial Council of Zaragoza through the association Territorio Mudéjar, as a private collaborating entity that manages the implementation and execution of the initiative.
Territorio Mudéjar has commemorated today the 20th anniversary of the declaration as World Heritage with a meeting of researchers that has been held in Tobed and that has brought together those responsible for many of the more than 30 projects launched by this entity since its founding.
The aim of these initiatives is to deepen the knowledge of Mudejar art from different perspectives and to generate and promote local development projects based on Mudejar heritage resources: construction materials, popular architecture and its conservation, relationship between Mudejar and agricultural heritage, podcast to learn about the territory, guide to historic Mudejar carpentry, models of cultural management and restoration projects, educational materials to interpret the Mudejar in primary and secondary schools, plastic studies on Mudejar geometry, Mudejar art in the performing arts (music, dance and minstrelsy), digital inventories and virtual reconstruction of Mudejar buildings or maps of the territory through memories and emotions to broaden the view of what it means to be Mudejar…