Cultural Landscapes and Related Sites Alliance Technical Visit

Territorio Mudéjar continues weaving networks. This time we do it with the Alliance of Cultural Landscapes and Related Sites, with whom we have been working for some time and who are visiting us these days to learn about our heritage and work methodology, share experiences and move towards joint activities.

The technical visit began in Tobed, headquarters of Territorio Mudéjar. The director of the organization, Victoria Trasobares, guided our guests through the church, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and through the town to learn about its heritage, urban and agricultural landscape. They also visited the headquarters of Territorio Mudéjar.

We have been accompanied by María Del Pozo, general secretary of the Landscape Alliance and director of the Aranjuez Cultural Landscape Foundation; and Miguel Vadell, insular director of Territory and Landscape of the Consell de Mallorca on behalf of the presidency of the Cultural Landscape Alliance, which holds the Cultural Landscape of the Serra de Tramuntana.

The visit continued throughout the week:

Wednesday 7.

#Tobed. Visit to the Mudejar church World Heritage Site and continue to know the landscape of the town. Visit to the pottery pottery of Conchita Gimeno and breakfast with local products.

#Ricla. Visit partner village. Heritage, urban landscape and agricultural landscape as incipient lines of a strategic plan for the management of heritage resources.

#Borja. Visit to the locality and study of the cultural landscape of the Casa de la Estanca.

#Daroca. Walk and visit to the Posada del Almudi to learn about the project ” qualityseal for establishments oriented to scientific tourism “.

Thursday 8

#Daroca. Walk through the streets decorated for the Corpus Christi and monuments. Walk, dinner and lodging at the Posada del Almudi, a 16th and 17th century house recovered 25 years ago for lodging.

The Alliance of Cultural Landscapes and Related Sites is an initiative that aims to bring together different cultural landscapes and related sites, which illustrate the evolution of society and human settlements over the years, under the influence of the constraints and/or advantages presented by the natural environment, and internal and external social, economic and cultural forces to create a joint work of man and nature of exceptional universal value.

Open doors visit to the Torreón de la Lisalta in Cosuenda

This weekend we have been in Cosuenda, in the open doors visit to the Torreón de La Lisalta, an activity financed by the City Council and with technical management of Territorio Mudéjar.

During the tour of the tower and the castle we also enjoyed a concert by “Camerata Patrimonio Sonoro”.

During the visit we remembered that the oldest medieval remains of Cosuenda are those of the castle, built in the 14th century to protect the town. It is called the Lisalta tower and is located in the highest part of the village, from where we can see the whole village and the Sierra de Algairén.

Territorio Mudéjar takes part again in the Desafío programme

Territorio Mudéjar is once again participating in the sixth edition of the Desafío programme – known as rural Erasmus -, an internship programme funded by the Diputación de Zaragoza and managed by the University of Zaragoza.

Thanks to this initiative, students and recent graduates will have work experience in rural areas of Zaragoza.

In this edition, six students from different fields of knowledge – all of them linked to heritage – will live and train in our partner towns.

Students will have the opportunity to work in the 43 partner locations and live for several months in our working environment.

Tobed, Daroca, Castejón de Valdejasa, Torrellas, Fréscano or Ricla could be one of the destinations, which will be evaluated with the selected students.

We return to the Aragonese tourism fair: Aratur

The Aragonese Tourism Fair, Aratur 2023, opened its doors this Friday, 12th May, at the Zaragoza Conference Centre, to offer the potential and wealth of the region at more than 60 promotional points, where Territorio Mudéjar is present, throughout the weekend until the 14th.

Our stand presents the villages through two projects:

– didactic guide

– walks for families and children, the result of the circular project.

We have been visited by the President of the Government Delegate, Rosa Serrano; the Deputy Mayoress of Zaragoza, Sara Fernández; the Director General of Tourism of the Government of Aragon, Gloria Pérez; the President of the Zaragoza Chamber of Commerce, Jorge Villarroya; and the President of the Zaragoza Trade Fair, Manuel Teruel.

The University of Zaragoza lecturers Pilar Biel, Pedro Luis Hernando and Jorge Jiménez also visited the stand. Also two students of the master’s degree in advanced studies

Admission is free and the opening hours are Friday, 12 May, and Saturday, 13 May, from 11.00 to 14.30 and from 16.30 to 20.30; and on Sunday, 14 May, from 11.00 to 14.30 and from 16.30 to 19.00.

Territorio Mudéjar Easter special

We would like to share with you the festivals declared to be of tourist interest that are being celebrated these days in our partner towns.

Easter Week in ATECA is one of the 26 destinations in Aragon that have been declared a Festival of Tourist Interest in Aragon. The procession of the Holy Burial on Good Friday stands out with more than 300 people involved. The procession consists of 34 floats, including distinctive elements such as the skeleton of a woman symbolising Death. This is a human skeleton from the 17th century, about a metre and a half high, whose bones are strung together with wires, and which occupies the second place at the start of this central act.

Easter Week in TARAZONA is another of the celebrations recognised as a Festival of Regional Tourist Interest. The processions go through the intricate streets of this beautiful municipality. These days 12 processions will take place with more than a thousand brotherhoods and more than 50 official events.

CALATAYUD’s Holy Week, declared of Tourist Interest in Aragon, reaches its climax on Good Friday, when the very ancient procession of the Holy Burial, dating from the 15th century, sets off in the afternoon from the church of San Juan, el Real. Twenty-four processional floats made between the 17th and 20th centuries take part, carried by the 12 brotherhoods or penitential brotherhoods and more than 300 characters from the Old and New Testament. In the Plaza de España, the ancient Auto Sacramental del Entierro de Cristo is held.

Easter Week in TAUSTE has been declared a festival of tourist interest in Aragon and is impressive for the ceremonial richness of the rituals and the artistic excellence of the processions, some of which date back to the 17th and 18th centuries. During this week, processions such as the Encounter, the washing of the feet on Maundy Thursday, the procession of the Last Supper, the procession of the Proclamation or the Holy Burial take place.

???? Luis Manuel García Vicén.

Heritage as a learning space: a visit with Art History students

These days we have visited Torralba de Ribota and Mesones de Isuela with the second year Art History group of the Conservation subject.

The people who will be the future of our profession experienced the use of real heritage for learning and enjoyed the architectural space as a classroom.

Thegroup was accompanied by teachers Gonzalo Preciado, Julio Gracia and María Ángeles Cejador.

In addition, Alfredo Notivol, guide of the Comarca del Aranda and former trainee of Territorio Mudéjar, was our cicerone in the castle of Mesones de Isuela.

MOMAr reaches its goal with a study visit in the province of Zaragoza

The European project MOMAr (Models of Management for Singular Rural Heritage) led by the DPZ and in which we are a stakeholder has reached its goal with the last study visit.

It has done so after four years of work, with a meeting in the province of Zaragoza that has brought together more than 60 experts in the field of heritage management and political representatives from five participating countries (Spain, Romania, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Germany), as well as a large group of public and private entities from the province of Zaragoza that have been an active part of the project.

MOMAr has served to promote the exchange of good practices in heritage management in rural areas of the five partner countries, as well as the implementation of new management models in each of the participating territories.

Territorio Mudéjar has been an active part of this project, which has allowed us to expose our good practices in Europe, to meet very interesting initiatives and to participate in international projects.

The final MOMAr conference has given the opportunity to explore the challenges of managing cultural and natural heritage in rural areas and to discover how partners have successfully implemented different projects and strategies in response to the singularities of these territories.

At this meeting, the manual of good practices was presented and visits were made to the industrial salt heritage of the village of Remolinos, the Uncastillo Foundation, the ceramics workshop school in Muel, Fuendetodos – with the house where Goya was born and the museum of engravings – and Los Bañales.

It has been a pleasure to share this learning journey with all of you. The project ends, but we continue to stay in touch as allies.

Territorio Mudéjar and Fuentes de Ebro launch a plan for the integration of emerging professionals to develop a strategic plan of action for tourism and heritage.

Territorio Mudéjar and the Town Council of Fuentes de Ebro have signed the first special agreement between the entity and a partner town council to develop a strategic plan of sustainable tourism and heritage action through the insertion of emerging professionals and the development of a calendar of activities in that town.

The activities will consist of a recreational activity and a visit to Fuentes de Ebro guided by heritage professionals in which the Mudejar culture and its relationship with the town will be explored in depth. There will also be a dynamic of citizen participation to listen to the contributions that the neighbours want to make to the design of the strategic plan.

The agreement will last for six months. To develop it, the association Territorio Mudéjar has set up a work team made up of two young professionals who have been trained in the organisation thanks to the Desafío-Arraigo internship programme, better known as rural Erasmus, a pioneering project in Spain that the Diputación de Zaragoza and the University of Zaragoza launched in 2018 to enable university students to do internships in companies, institutions and associations in rural areas of Zaragoza. Territorio Mudéjar is collaborating with this project in 2019 and has made it possible to create a pool of emerging professionals with the necessary skills for the needs specified by the Fuentes de Ebro Town Council.

The team will be supervised by the project management area of the Territorio Mudéjar entity, which will define the strategic lines and integrate the locality’s own actions with the different innovation projects that Territorio Mudéjar has been developing since 2019 in its research stays and projects.

The mayoress of Fuentes de Ebro, María Pilar Palacín, explained that this agreement advances the local tourism strategy of the town, which seeks to make cultural resources, nature tourism and events visible to different target audiences. Among the heritage resources, she recalled that Fuentes de Ebro has the Gothic-Renaissance and Mudejar church of San Miguel, the Moorish and Jewish quarter in the town centre, vestiges of the civil war (trenches, machine gun nests) and the village of Rodén Viejo, declared a site of cultural interest; interesting post-war architecture and rationalist architecture (library), among others, to which are added the resources of landscape, gastronomy and nature.

The director of Territorio Mudéjar, Victoria Trasobares, added that this project is an interesting pilot model of collaboration with the partners that allows for progress in a line of work such as an “observatory” or “advisory committee” that the town councils can use to provide a strategic vision for their work in the management of local resources. Moreover, Trasobares added that “in the case of Fuentes de Ebro, the potential of the town and the great work done so far is evident, but also the intention to work with a vision of the future that would provide a link between the results of other previous projects such as: photography for different uses, the use of educational materials for families, the design of tourist awareness days or the impact of research actions on local development”.

This agreement will be a pilot test that could be extended to the rest of the partner municipalities that wish to incorporate emerging trained professionals who can be linked to the localities in the medium or long term, and introduce a way of working based on the quality and sustainability of the resources of the locality from a strategic and unitary supervision.

Calendar of activities:

The project began in January with various sectorial meetings and will continue with public activities from March with a calendar of conference-visits. The activities will have a fixed part (historical-artistic visit to the heritage of Fuentes -church and town planning- and to the historical complex of Rodén) and another thematic part that will change on each date with specialists or local experts:

  • Sunday 19 March: architecture and urban planning. Explanation of the urban development of Fuentes de Ebro and Rodén with specialists in the field linked to the town.
  • Sunday 16 April: Holy Week. Explanation of Easter Week linked to Fuentes de Ebro.
  • Sunday 7 May: Landscape and materials. Explanation of the extraction, work and use of the materials found in the area around Fuentes de Ebro, which are traditionally used for construction. Special emphasis will be placed on clay and alabaster. In addition, from the privileged enclave of Rodén, issues such as the explanation of the water resources and their importance in the configuration of the agricultural landscape that forms one of the signs of identity of Fuentes de Ebro and Rodén will be addressed.
  • Sunday 21 May: gastronomy and trade. Emphasis will be placed on local businesses and gastronomic traditions linked to the town of Fuentes de Ebro with various options such as micro-stops in invited businesses along the route and presentation of local products.
  • Sunday 11 June: activities for families. The visit will incorporate a didactic vision of the history of Fuentes de Ebro and Rodén through the different materials developed in the ‘Mudejar Pedagogy’ and ‘Mudejar Territory Circular’ projects.

Territorio Mudéjar currently has 40 member town councils in the province of Zaragoza and works to preserve and disseminate the Mudejar heritage as a driving force for local development.

Pilot project to recognise local services suitable for scientific tourism

Territorio Mudéjar is participating in a pilot project with European funding to design its own quality seal to distinguish local establishments with services suitable for scientific tourism linked to heritage and cultural resources.

The project, called Digitour, is funded by the European Commission’s Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises within the framework of the Cosme Cos-Tourinn-2020-3-04 programme and aims to boost the tourism sector by bringing together companies in this sector with providers of innovative and digital solutions using territorial and cultural heritage for tourism purposes. It is also linked to the work of creating networks of professionals with activity and impact in the villages that Territorio Mudéjar develops through its Research Stays and Projects.

The pilot project will begin 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 integrated in the landscape of the Danube Gorges, in the surroundings of the Natural Park of the Iron Gates, a geopark declared World Heritage by UNESCO, whose associated heritage offers a high cultural value as well as a very interesting ethnographic development.

This union of European companies is, moreover, the result of the exchange trips of good practices of the European project MOMAr Interreg Europe led by the Diputación de Zaragoza and in which the association Territorio Mudéjar has actively participated since its inception in 2019.

This seal of quality recognises establishments that are prepared to cater for the tourism of people and professionals who travel to research, learn about or develop projects related to the heritage and history of the network of towns and villages in the Mudejar Territory and then translate this into their studies.

The pilot project will define the characteristics of hotel services for these customers with the aim of generating a European-wide flow of knowledge-driven travellers.

Globally, the Digitour project, in which Territorio Mudéjar participates, with 12 partner countries will launch 19 collaborative projects in which tourism SMEs and digital providers will collaborate. This will involve improving the tourism skills and capabilities in the cultural field of small and medium-sized enterprises through training and advice. It will also promote innovative ideas for SMEs to improve their offer and the management, marketing and promotion of their services in a new and sustainable way.

SMEs are the backbone of the tourism sector in Europe (they represent 90% of the companies in the sector) and, in this context, they play a crucial role in innovating and relaunching the sector. They often find it difficult to access digital tools and Digitour aims to help them become part of an innovative ecosystem. It does so by granting two types of vouchers.

One, for individual SMEs that want to improve their skills in digital tools. The other is for groups of SMEs cooperating on innovative projects or who want to participate in an international digital ecosystem.