Talayotic Menorca has already been registered on the UNESCO world heritage list since this week. In Riyadh, a long journey of 14 years has ended since his candidacy began, including reformulation. Along with its funerary naves, its taulas and talayots, testimonies of a cyclopean prehistoric culture, it has been approved to register the Maison Carrée de Nîmes, the sinister Higher School of Mechanics of the Navy in Buenos Aires, where they were tortured during the dictatorship, or the Anticosti Island in Quebec, witness of the first great animal extinction.
They are all united by one characteristic. As María Agúndez, deputy director general of Cultural Heritage of the Ministry of Culture, emphasizes, those registered must be exceptional. And Spain has managed to reach fifty unique sites with the talayots, being the fifth country in the world after Italy (59), China (57) and France and Germany, with 52.
And it did not start with impetus: if the list opened in 1978 with spaces such as the Galapagos or Yellowstone, Spain did not manage to register anything until 1984, when the cathedral of Burgos, the center of Córdoba, the Alhambra, the Escorial and Gaudí arrived. : La Pedrera and the Palau and Park Güell.
Agúndez points out that the current push is due to the interest of cities and communities in promoting candidacies and the work done by administrations with them. Although it is not always achieved: there have been failures such as that of the Añana Salt Valley, in Álava, or that of the Ribeira Sacra, withdrawn to be reviewed before the Fuzhou meeting, in China, in 2021: UNESCO pointed out issues such as the dams created under Franco.
The next candidacy will be the Paisaje del Olivar, the Andalusian sea of olive trees, for 2025.
However, in Fuzhou the candidacy of Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro, popularized as Landscape of Light, was registered. Elena Hernando, general director of Cultural Heritage of the Madrid City Council, remembers that the candidacy has been quick: its first steps were in 2014.
The procedures are long, they involve entering the Spanish Tentative List of candidates, where they must be for a year, and whose entry must be approved by the Spanish Historical Heritage Council, on which all the communities are and which chooses the final candidates. Then come reviews, visits from experts and a lot of requests for information, says Hernando.
And after the success, a lot of work, especially because in the case of Madrid, that pioneering urban green space, which they would copy in Havana or Lima, and those illustrated museums and research centers, such as the Botanical Garden, are a living place for who develop a master plan that coheres their image and clarifies priorities and uses.
The archaeologist Toni Ferrer, director of the Menorca Talayótica Agency and architect of the reformulation of the candidacy since 2017, recalls the importance of Menorcan's prehistoric heritage.
There two centuries ago Joan Ramis published the first prehistory book written in Spain. He believes that the inscription should serve to preserve and promote heritage research and disseminate it, and also expand ancient sun and beach tourism.
The economist Lluís Bonet, director of the Cultural Management Program at the University of Barcelona, points out that the impact of an inscription in world heritage is more notable in the least touristy places and less in the most frequented ones.
But, he emphasizes, there are more impacts: both in the conservation that those registered must carry out to remain on the list and in the self-esteem of its citizens.
Also negative impacts: a disproportionate increase in tourism can endanger uniqueness. That the economic impact can be relevant, he indicates, is shown by studies on the Camino de Santiago, a world heritage site since 1993, and how the GDP of towns increases depending on their proximity to it. Of course, he points out that if the initial inscriptions on the list led the public to perceive them as exceptional places, as it grows – already 1,172 – the goose that lays the golden eggs may be endangered.
