Summary - TST 44

TRANSPORTES, SERVICIOS Y TELECOMUNICACIONES


TST 44
Antoni GONZÁLEZ MORENO-NAVARRO
How should I restore the heritage (also the industrial one)

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Key Words: Spain, Catalonia, Industrial heritage, Industrial archaeology, monumental restoration, methodology.


[ Abstract ]

The author takes a brief look at the rapid process of raising awareness in the world of Spanish culture of the importance that the material evidence left in our territory by industrialisation could have for historical knowledge and the increase in the country's monumental heritage, with particular reference to the buildings erected for this purpose throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. A process whose beginnings coincide with those of the country's path towards democracy and has as one of its milestones the salvation at the last moment of an important industrial building in Terrassa (Barcelona) and its subsequent reuse as a museum. It then goes on to review the emergence and establishment in our context of the concept of Industrial Heritage at the beginning of the 1980s and the role that this heritage will play throughout the “prodigious decade” that the country will experience, and in particular the restoration of monuments. Based on his participation in the professional debate that took place at that time, the author argues his disagreement with some of the prevailing theses and defends that in his opinion the conservation and restoration of this heritage does not require a specific methodology, different from that which should be applied to the whole of the built cultural heritage. He goes on to explain the working method he created from 1985 onwards to guide all the interventions of the oldest monument service in Spain, which he directed between 1981 and 2008. Finally, he explains and comments on some of the specific features of Industrial Heritage in terms of its restoration and reuse, citing a work carried out in Catalonia at the end of the last century that he considers exemplary.