“Adding up the budgets of all levels of government, spending on our historic heritage has gone from €912.5 million in 2007 to €199.6 in 2013: we are moving toward chronic austerity,” he warns. At the local level, spending fell by 61%, from €657.2 million to €254.6 million. He says overall, spending in this area fell by more than half from €590 million to €259 million. Responsibility for Spain’s architectural heritage has been largely devolved to regional governments, says García Diego. ![]() Between 20, spending fell by a further 5%, he says. State spending on Spain’s historical buildings “fell by 44% between 20, from €464 million to €261 million,” says José Manuel García Diego of Protecturi, a heritage foundation that has prepared a report on the impact of the crisis on Spain’s cultural heritage. It’s not just about protecting buildings of historical and artistic value, but the environment around them, the countryside.”įor the moment, restoration is not on the cards: spending by Spain’s savings banks, many of which were hit hard by the collapse of the property market in 2008, provided some €109 million that year toward protecting Spain’s architectural heritage by 2012, that figure fell to €11.2 million. This would be a source of revenue through restaurants, shops, hotels. She agrees that reviving the Spanish countryside is essential: “Revitalizing these areas would see people return to their villages, even if only sporadically. A lot of people could live from renovating those buildings.”Īraceli Pereda is the president of Hispania Nostra, a not-for-profit body set up in 1976 to help protect Spain’s cultural heritage, and which has drawn up a list of 700 buildings it says are in danger. We need something similar, providing good services and high-speed internet, reducing taxes in rural areas, positive discrimination policies for women and tax breaks for restoring historic buildings… We have to facilitate resettlement, but not based solely on agriculture. ![]() ![]() “It would take at least 20 years to repopulate these areas,” he says, arguing that a repeat of the policies of the Middle Ages is required today: “The monarchy granted certain rural privileges. Many monuments are not properly signposted or accessible and so are never visited
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